Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind – New York Times
That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. The biggest beneficiary is no longer so poor: China, with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, received three-fifths of the money last year. And as a result, some of the poorest countries are being left out.
Scientists increasingly worry about the emissions from developing countries, which may contribute to global environmental problems even sooner than previously expected. China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases.
The controversy is that China, India and Brazil together are gobbling up close to 80% of the UN Clean Development Mechanism Funds. What is the CDM?
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (so-called Annex 1 countries) to invest in emission reducing projects in developing countries as an alternative to what is generally considered more costly emission reductions in their own countries.
In theory, the CDM allows for a drastic reduction of costs for the industrialised countries, while achieving the same amount of emission reductions as without the CDM. However, critics have long argued that emission reductions under the CDM may be fictive, and in early 2007 the CDM came under fire for paying €4.6 billion for destruction of HFC gases while according to a study this would cost only €100 million if funded by development agencies.
Source wikipedia.
The Kyoto protocol was supposed to be a starting point for further negotiations. Unfortunately, the U.S pulled out and put negotiations towards a better worldwide mechanism on the backburner.
Back to the issue at hand? This program is supposed to help countries that are expanding their energy use fast to develop clean sources of energy. India and China are both developing at breakneck pace, and every bit of wind energy that goes in there is one less Megawatt from coal. Yes, the money is not going to Africa, but Africa is not developing infrastructure at that pace (the reasons for that have filled many books!). This program is not meant to foster development, it is meant to facilitate clean development wherever development occurs. So, if China is developing the fastest, it has equal rights to access these funds to put in a wind energy infrastructure.
If you want China and India to stop using these funds and use some of their own money to develop clean energy, you have to redesign the program to include a rider that takes into account the affluence of the country. The more money a country has, the less it gets from the CDM, or it has to atleast pony up a bigger share. You also have to put in the infrastructure in poorer countries that can take advantage of these funds. Without a power distribution infrastructure, or a functioning government or bureaucracy, how do you expect a poor country in Africa to take advantage of a complicated credits based funding program?
Development is complicated stuff, and distortions like these happen all the time. When the Kyoto protocol was negotiated, China was not rich, now it has a little more money. Development situations are fluid and demand flexibility in action, and constant monitoring. If the world’s richest country does not participate, and actively trashes the UN continuously, old and imperfect agreements stay in power even longer. U.S disavowal of the Kyoto protocol has the effect of making the protocol’s distortions even stronger and delaying action to fix them.
Although there seems to be such a great deal of debate over this issue of BPA safety, this issue is not so fuzzy. Every independent body that has reviewed all of the research on BPA has come to the same conclusion, BPA is safe as a food contact material. Why would this be the case when all you hear is so many bad effect associated with BPA? These independent agencies give studies a score on relevancy to human health. So when you see in the press that BPA is associated with certain effects, that makes for great press, but what you may also miss, because it is not printed, is that most of these effects were seen in animals that are not like humans, with dosing methods not like human oral exposure (often subcutaneous injections, not sure how many humans inject BPA into their bloodstream), and at levels far above what humans are exposed. Now to top it off you need to also know that this issue has become the new item for many environmental groups. They want to push their agenda on this issue. It is also important to remember that not every environmental group is the same. A good example of this is the Environmental Working Group, they recently published a report on BPA in canned foods (which by the way shows that every sample was at least 10x below the lowest regulated amount). But what is the EWG’s true motivation? Well, as their main funding on this issue comes from trial lawyers I think we now see what their real agenda is. As was highlighted several months ago by the woman who dies from drinking too much water for a radio show contest, every chemical is dangerous when taken in high enough doses. Does this mean we should ban the use of water?
I know it may be hard to believe, but it may just be that the FDA, European Food Safety Authority, and the Japanese Ministry of Health are right on this one. BPA is safe as a food contact material. But that is just not convenient for the trial lawyers!!
So, I am to believe that a cabal of environmental groups and trial lawyers have hatched a conspiracy to destroy this poor chemical and the manufacturers that make it?? Please!!
I don’t think BPA is near a point where it warrants a complete ban. However, the research into BPA is very interesting to me because it highlights the flaws in our model of setting exposure levels. We test in animals at high doses and look for acute effects. We apply a safety factor and call that the acceptable dose. With BPA, scientists are finding that at very low, ambient exposure levels, there are very subtle hormonal effects that result in significant endocrine disruption over generations. This research points to the fact that the dose-response relationships for BPA are likely non-linear. That is, a response at a low level cannot be extrapolated from a dose at a high level. What’s worse, the mechanism of response seems to be different, and more powerful at low levels rather than high levels.
Your comment about water is an obvious strawman and not worth responding to.
Am I to understand that you think it is impossible for the trial lawyers to have taken on this issue to milk it for everything it is worth. Look what they did with asbestos. They ran so many companies bankrupt by signing up anyone who ever stepped foot into a plant that may have had some asbestos in it that there is little money left to pay people who are really injured, oh but they are all rich.
The research on BPA is very interesting, but why does every “independent” government body who reviews the full research, not that which is spun by groups like EWG, do they come to the same conclusion. A good example is recently hatched idea that BPA causes obesity, well if that were true would not every other study on BPA where the 1st thing you do is weigh the animal have found that. But obesity is another hot topic so why not attach that claim to BPA too, even if there is no data to support it. Usually that is a sign that science is lost and other agendas have taken over when they start throwing the kitchen sink at it (like obesity).