Millions of young Australians and equal numbers of older people are genuinely alarmed about world carbon emissions.
Sadly, they are being hoodwinked by false carbon reduction schemes in what is one of the greatest scams seen in our history.
Here I want to emphasise that this commentary is not an attack on climate science, nor the basic climate policies of our political parties. I’m simply revealing the massively crooked practices taking place outside Australia to rig claimed global carbon emission reductions.
But we may get caught up in the racket because the ALP plans to allow Australian companies to buy carbon credits overseas to offset their carbon emissions.
As I will describe below, if we are not very careful, these overseas carbon credits may be fictitious as a result of the rackets being embraced in Europe and elsewhere.
Once rackets get into any market, they multiply. To the credit of genuine global Greens, the world anti-carbon movement has woken up to the rackets is trying to stop them in the courts, but it will take a long time.
And Australia, with the best of intentions, may be one of the few countries in the world playing the carbon reduction game properly. That puts us at a huge disadvantage economically.
We all know that under President Trump, the US has stepped back from carbon commitments and it is no surprise that the Americans have a role in fostering the “carbon reduction” racket.
China is working to reduce its emissions but is unlikely to achieve reductions for a decade. That said, its work on molten salt cooled thorium power is exciting. India, meanwhile, has a coal-based energy agenda.
On the surface the two great population centres making carbon progress appear to be Japan and Europe. Japan looks genuine and parts of Europe have made big real reductions in carbon emissions. But huge slabs of Europe are faking their carbon reductions. In addition, according to reputable Germany’s largest newsweekly magazine Der Spiegel, the great German wind generation program is in trouble.
I first learned about European carbon reduction faking from Terry McCrann in last week’s The Weekend Australian.
On further investigation I found Terry was indeed on the money.
In 2009, the EU committed itself to 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020. It put so called “biomass” on the renewable energy sources list.
By 2014, biomass accounted for 40 per cent of the EU’s renewable energy and by 2020, it’s projected to make up 60 per cent.
Genuine biomass is a legitimate carbon reduction source but Europe has embraced “fake biomass” on a massive scale. The biggest source of its so-called biomass energy is burning wood, which is one of the worst forms of carbon producing energy. Coal emits far less carbon than burning timber.
The best rackets start of the top of an administration. And so it was the European Commission itself that declared that the carbon from burning wood would not be counted in carbon emissions because over 100 or so years, it would be replaced by growing new trees. It also reasoned that some wood was on the ground and would rot away (forget the multitude of small animals and insects who prosper in those years). Not counting carbon emissions from wood burning is complete humbug and, to be fair, the intelligent Greens in Europe also know the EC is sprouting total fiction. The fiction was designed to enable Europe to say it was meeting emission undertakings when it is clearly not doing so.
When rackets start at the top, they change behaviour dramatically. And so, one of the largest coal power stations in the UK, the Drax plant in North Yorkshire, (which is bigger than Australia’s now closed Hazelwood coal plant) has now switched mostly to burning timber and is gradually winding down coal.
Its carbon emissions have naturally skyrocketed, but according to the rules it is now rapidly becoming carbon neutral; a huge “carbon emissions reduction”. And behind this nonsense are horrible timber stories. Guess who is providing most of the timber to be burned in the name of carbon reduction: the US.
Here are two versions of what happens:
Online publication Vox described the situation thusly: “In the lowland forests of the American southeast, loblolly pines and cypress trees are grabbing carbon dioxide from the air right now. Using power from the sun, they release the oxygen and bind the carbon, building trunks, barks, and leaves.
“But much of that carbon won’t stay there. As it turns out, millions of tons of wood from these forests each year are being shipped across the Atlantic and burned in power plants in countries like the UK and the Netherlands, in the name of slowing climate change.
“As they steadily wean themselves off coal, European Union nations are banking on wood energy, or “biomass,” to meet their obligations under the Paris climate agreement”, Vox says
The second version of events says in the United States, Canada, and Eastern Europe, crooked trees, bark, treetops, and sawdust have been pulped, pressed into pellets, and heat-dried in kilns and sent to Europe for burning.
What’s happening revolts me. Imagine what genuine Greens will feel when they realise they are being duped.
But it gets worse. With its cover story “A botched job in Germany” Der Spiegel’s shows broken wind turbines and incomplete electrical transmission towers against a dark silhouette of Berlin.
“The Energiewende — the biggest political project since reunification — threatens to fail,” the magazine says.
“Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion annually. But opposition to renewables is growing in the German countryside.
“The politicians fear citizen resistance. There is hardly a wind energy project that is not fought”, Der Spiegel reports.
The whole process is slowing down under community pressure.
But the magazine does not point out the obvious: according to the EC rules it’s just as “carbon efficient” to burn wood as it is to put windmills all over the country.
The ALP’s policy is for Australian companies send uncalculated billions of dollars overseas to buy carbon credits. A good portion of that money will go into buying carbon credits from power stations because they have switched from coal to wood and “eliminated” their carbon emissions.
Once fiction invades a market, rackets become part of the game. I am sure neither Bill Shorten nor the Greens understand that the rackets that have taken over the global carbon credits market.
We must not send our good money (which ultimately comes from you and I via higher prices) overseas to give impetus to greater carbon emissions.