The great global warming swindle

The West is running a protectionist racket against the developing world

Ross Clark

08 August 2007

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The West’s new greenness conceals a giant protectionist racket

While this will cause outrage in India and China, those countries shouldn’t expect a great deal of sympathy from Gordon Brown, who has already made it his ambition for Britain to benefit from global warming at the expense of the poor. Imagine if you were a Third World peasant listening, on a crackling, wind-up radio set, to the then Chancellor’s pre-budget report last December: ‘I can report that following the Stern Review, 31 countries in the EU and EFTA have already signed up to emissions trading as the first step to this global framework. And we are bringing together the major financial institutions: our aim, to make London the world’s trading centre for carbon trading.’

In other words, the driving force behind the Prime Minister’s great mission to extend carbon trading worldwide isn’t so much to prevent climate change as to boost the profits of the City. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme forces companies and organisations which emit more carbon than their agreed targets to buy carbon credits from those who undershoot their targets. That it is a bizarre piece of bureaucracy which enriches those good at negotiating their targets at the expense of those who are less good should already be obvious following the revelation that Shell has made a £49.9 million profit and BP a £43.1 million from selling their unused allocations, while the NHS has made a net loss of £6 million. But it will be even more absurd when industries undergoing expansion in developing nations are forced to buy carbon credits from shrinking industrial operations in Europe, helping in the process to buy Porsches for big wheels in the City.