U.N. Emission Program: Unevenflow
The New York Times published an interesting story last week about problems surfacing in an international emission credit trading program sponsored by the United Nations.

 

The program, known as the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism, enables businesses in industrialized nations, mainly in Europe and Japan, to fund pollution reduction projects in developing countries. In return, those companies receive credits that help them comply with their own nations' emission limits.

 

The NYT reports that the U.N. program is creating grossly inflated costs for pollution reduction projects at factories in China and a handful of other nations. How gross, you wonder? Pretty gross: in some cases, as much as a hundredfold. And those profits wind up lining the pockets of the factory owners and the international financiers who string the deals together.

 

The European and Japanese companies funding the projects consider them worthwhile despite the huge sums flowing to outsiders because the projects still cost less than those companies would have to spend to clean up their own operations.

 

Another unintended consequence of the U.N. program is that almost all of the pollution-reduction funds are flowing to factories in four countries -- China, India, South Korea and Brazil. At the same time, very little is flowing to sub-Saharan African nations, which were initially envisioned as major benefactors of the program.

 

Bracing For Bottle Bill Battle
Thanks to the reader who sent this next link in. Eliot Spitzer, New York's environmental-crusading attorney general and governor-elect, is set to assume his new office next week, and some Empire Staters think Spitzer's step up will help revitalize the state's bottle-bill-expansion movement.

 

As a result, New York's Food Industry Alliance is gearing up to fight the expected bottle-bill groundswell by posting messages in food markets urging shoppers to oppose the measure and to support alternatives such as increased investment in curbside programs.

 

The above-linked message is a sample of the bills being posted in New York supermarkets, according to my reader-informer.

 

Bad News For Bears
The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Bush administration will seek to have the polar bear listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The proposal is based on scientific evidence that rising temperatures are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears use as a platform to hunt seals.

 

The decision is being hailed by environmental groups because they say it evinces growing acceptance within the White House that the threats posed by global warming are serious and require urgent action.

 

Playing The Game To The Hilt
Hmm. I think the previous item and this final one may be connected somehow. The Onion reports that former Vice President Al Gore has recently been seen engaging in several acts of climate vandalism, such as taking a flamethrower to an antarctic ice shelf. The Onion surmises that Gore is trying to boost box office receipts for his documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

 

At first I thought this sounded like a spoof. But then I clicked the link and beheld Photographic Evidence of one of the ex-veep's no-nos. There can be no doubt about the truthiness of this one.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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