Wednesday, May 21, 2008

LOL x 2

Together chiefs hit back at us

Good one...

...campaign director of Together, has to say (sent to Greenbang by a press officer).

And two...

With so much noise around going ‘green’ nowadays, Together seeks to provide consumers with a trusted reference for what they can do to tackle climate change.

And... for heavens' sake, why do all these vastly over-funded (and hence staffed, and resourced - Campaign Director, plus press officer?) and overlapping gov/industry/quango things come across so gosh-darn po-faced? I know it's their careers and a box-tick under CSR and all come the AGM, but get real. There are scores of these things.

Does the normal consumer notice? Or care? Hey, it's their dough so blow it any way they feel like, but that's the second outing for a short list of stuff I heard when I was at school with IK Brunel. Next they'll have a full-blown campaign on 'bath with a friend'.

Is this really the best use of money, especially if (and I am not sure if it is) public funds are getting blown (what's a Campaign Director run to these days?) on yet more awareness at the expense of actually supporting DOING initiatives.

With all the tangible reduction/mitigation ideas out there ready to be supported, THIS is the kind of me-too initiative that most value is seen in?

No wonder this country has blown £60B on quangos and all the real innovators are upping sticks. The lunatics have hired accountants to pay consultants to review the state of the asylum so lessons can be learned, with a view to putting place a new layer of assessment to hand back whatever is left to the few poor sods there are out there actually making a few beans to count... and then tax.

Rant over. Carry on.

CDM's, CER's and a strong whiff of corruption.

It looks as if the much vaunted Clean Development Mechanism, developed under the Kyoto Protocol and run by the U.N. is not quite having the emissions reduction effect that was it's primary goal.

According to this from the Guardian, things are not going too well under the schemes; "evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams - in many cases for projects they would have built anyway."

"chemical companies can earn almost twice as much from selling CERs as from selling refrigerant gases. This has spurred concern that refrigerant producers may be increasing their output solely so that they can produce, and then destroy, more waste gases."

Wherever something is traded, there's almost always a small proportion of that trade that is corrupt to some degree or other. This, however, seems to indicate corruption, cheating and falsification on a mega scale. The thing is, these schemes are potentially rather important to the future of humanity, and they need to be managed and controlled carefully and correctly.

But, under the control of the U.N. , properly managed and controlled? Fat chance!

Addendum:
And, of course, where there is trading, whether in carbon credits or anything else, and there is a chance to line your own pockets, the sharks circle about and dart in every now and again to take their own substantial piece of the action. I'm talking, of course, about lawyers, as this from MSNBC explains.