Thursday 6 September 2007

Carbon Treadmills - Indian Gym machines!

Huge relief! I am not a cynic! I am not environmentally ignorant! I am not a selfish carbon emitting eco-destroyer! I am a quite sensible individual (well most of the time :-) ) that happens to think that the carbon offsetting industry that has developed on the back of global warming is at best cynical and opportunistic and at worst dangerous and damaging to those who are most vulnerable!

I know i'm right because even the Guardian agrees! But the best expose of this deceitful business is to be found in a recent article in the London Times with the following headline:
"To cancel out the CO2 of a return flight to India, it will take one poor villager three years of pumping water by foot. So is carbon offsetting the best way to ease your conscience?"
The opening paragraphs are worth a read if nothing else:

When David Cameron flew to India to open a JCB factory for a party donor, green-thinking supporters could rest assured that his visit would be carbon neutral. “We are offsetting all our emissions through Climate Care,” the Tory leader wrote on his blog. “As well as planting trees, they also invest in renewable energy projects in the developing world.”
Somewhere in the Indian countryside, a farmer is about to repay Mr Cameron’s debt to the planet. Climate Care’s latest enterprise is to provide “treadle pumps” to poor rural families so they can get water on to their land without using diesel power. The pumps are worked by stepping on pedals. If a peasant treads for two hours a day, it will take at least three years to offset the CO2 from Mr Cameron’s return flight to India.

As Spikedonline observe: Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon. Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.
All of this confirms my continuing scepticism about the whole climate change hysteria which has almost taken over the media. Perhaps sea levels are getting higher, perhaps the ice-caps are melting and just perhaps we have overestimated our ability to change the current trajectory?

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