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CO2:
The new Indulgencies Trade
By Umberto Mazzei
Geneva, 06/01/2010
The essential element
of indulgences is assigning a person the merits made by others. The
basic doctrine was that prayer and good works had a value in divine
mercy that accumulated and became the "Treasury of the Church", a
mercy account in the other world. The initial deposit would have
been the merits of Jesus, then the merits of the saints and of
thousands of convents and millions of devotees raising their
prayers to heaven. These holy emissions built the church an account
of several trillions in heavenly mercy.
The church sold shares of its treasure to sinners who did the good
work of giving the church sound money, of this world.
History tells how this greedy trick created a
market known where indulgencies were traded. That traffic was one of
the most serious allegations put forward by the Protestant rebellion
and a scandal that forced reform in the Catholic Church itself.
Now there is talk
about skies again and again about indulgences.
The rich buy "Carbon Credits" to
have their emissions forgiven and force developing countries to keep
their present emission levels. The effect is to freeze the uneven
distribution of global wealth. As in WTO, with subsidies to the
agriculture of the rich that ruin the agriculture of the poor. It is
again the duty of the poor to save the planet and redeem the rich
sinners. The worst is that the hysteria created around CO2 -
a beneficial gas- deviates towards a future ghost the attention that
deserves present and very real pollution.
The real environmental
pollution
The planet is polluted and keeps been
polluted. One cause is ignorance, but the main one is greed, the
preaching of profit as the supreme end. Stimulate consumption to
earn more and save, letting the air, land or sea permeated with
toxic waste. Opencast mining. Oil black lakes, rivers and beaches.
Over-fishing.
Forests logged to plant soy and oil palm. Plastic
and toxic waste into seas. Indiscriminate garbage. Toxic
discharge into aquifers. NATO radioactive
ammunition causing deformed babies. Israeli cluster bombs killing
Lebanese children. The list is long, but no one is calling for a
world summit to fix it.
Almost all the pollution can be cleaned and
restored, with an effort. Europe already recovered many lakes,
rivers and forests. A high level of education and public
environmental awareness forced its politicians to act, while
remaining a major industrial power.
The country most contaminated with toxic residues are the United
States -which also produces 30% of world CO2 emissions, but it is
rarely mentioned. The Pentagon pollutes the world with
endless wars and from some 800 bases, but those emissions are not
counted. In all negotiations – Kyoto or Copenhagen- U.S. calls to
exclude Pentagon contamination,
to not measure it, for security reasons, obviously.
The demonization of CO2
The celestial purity is again haunted by a
devil. Again, the devil is a fallen angel: CO2, the gas that by
photosynthesis produces oxygen. The plants decay when the CO2 level
is down to 220 ppm
and at 160 ppm they die. They are at their best at around 1000 pmm.
Air is a mixture of gases, 78% nitrogen, 21%
oxygen and 1% of other gases, including CO2.
That fraction of CO2
varies with the oceans: the cold water absorbs CO2 and releases hot
water. The oceans store about 25% of CO2
for plants and marine life. CO2 is part of human respiration.
Beware, because suddenly we may be taxed for breathing.
There is a campaign to blame to the CO2 for
an increase in global temperature. The most notorious trumpeter of
the indictment is Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but an American
politician. His documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" manipulates from
the very title. His most evident mistake is that seas are heated by
CO2 emissions, when it is the reverse what happens; the sea heats up
first and then emits more CO2. It is a basic scientific fact and
also explains the parallel ascending curves of temperature and CO2.
I fear it is another case of selling some mischief by labelling the
opposite: a convenient lie.
We know from high school, that Earth
temperature varies according to solar radiation. Life exists in
Earth because of a "greenhouse effect" and the main gas that causes
it is water vapour, the clouds. The thesis of "Antrophogenic Global
Warming”
seems to exploit for political gain
sympathy from those who want to defend our environment from
pollution. A pretext is been
fabricated to impose a universal authority that manages the use of
fossil energy, creates new taxes, creates another false stocks
market and develops a market for environmental goods that will use
technology from the usual transnational corporations. On the mean
time, it will deviate attention from the real pollution.
Contradictions from the
very origin
In 1988, the UN created an Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Control- IPCC-, which hired a group of climate
scientists. In 1995, scientists presented a draft that said:
“1.
None of the studies has shown clear evidence of climate changes due
to greenhouse gases. 2. No study has positively attributed any
climate change to anthropogenic causes.”
In the IPCC final Summary Report for
lawmakers, those two clear denials were supplanted by a statement
which says: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human
influence on global climate." There was a scandal.
The scientists hired by the IPCC were outraged, many of them
resigned and demanded their names be erased from the Final Report.
Thousands of scientists have signed their
disagreement with the IPCC report. Someone may have been paid by oil
companies, but they have good arguments. All of them say that there
have always been global temperature changes, ice ages where the ice
reached down to the Alps and warm periods (900 -1200) in which the
icy Greenland was green and a Chinese fleet sailed across the
Arctic. Another argument is that
astronomers report an overall temperature increase in all the
planets, because an increase in solar activity.
No humans there.
Carbon Market
It is the favourite idea of big corporations,
banks, their politicians and some NGOs. The market would be managed
by a world authority that would set CO2 emissions levels. The volume
of emissions allowed would be that of historical levels, that is,
not diminishing but freezing them.
Those who exceed their legal level
of emissions can buy bonds to pay those who emit less than allowed.
In
Europe, there is something alike called Emissions Trading System -EU
ETS and President Sarkosy has announced an indirect (consumer)
carbon tax.
Freezing historical emissions is the essence
of the proposal. Economic growth requires energy and this comes from
fossil fuels that create CO2 and toxic gases. The carbon market is a
mechanism to put a brake on developing countries and create a new
stock market where to play with the emissions of dollars without
funds that pollute the international economy.
Pandemonium in
Copenhagen
The hidden purpose of the Copenhagen Summit
was to put price on CO2. First, a
paper previously "negotiated" with the usual “cooperative”
developing countries was introduced.
Access to the meetings was restricted under the pretext of giving
precedence to countries represented by their presidents, thus
excluding those represented by their Foreign Ministers. A
clear violation of international law. Even then, Hugo Chavez and Evo
Morales, present in Copenhagen, were also excluded.
Later on, something happened for the annals
of diplomatic malpractice. Denmark’s First Minister, Anders
Rasmussen, with the paper in his hand, ordered the countries to
study it in an hour, approve it and finalize. Then he got up to
leave, but the Secretariat invited him to stay because several
delegations wanted to speak. He gave the word only to the usual
ones.
The Venezuelan delegate, Claudia Salerno, hit
the table with the banner to no avail, asking to speak. In the end,
showing her bleeding hand she rebuked Rasmussen: "Must I have blood
in my hands to be allowed to speak? It a disgrace!" Finally she took
the floor, followed by Cuba, Bolivia and other ALBA delegations, all
of them rejecting the paper.
Mr. Rasmussen listened but didn’t take notes,
as does every president of a meeting. Then came the second "gaffe",
without further comment he asked how many countries were against, in
order to vote. Venezuela put
him in his place, reminding the audience that UN decisions are taken
by consensus. Mr. Rasmussen called for a pause, and did not return.
The meeting ended chaired by a Vice-President, from Bahamas, who did
the right thing: to take note of the paper.
Conclusions
Fighting
pollution is necessary and urgent. Putting the blame on CO2 for
Climate Change seems a fabrication aimed at another goal: to control
CO2, which is to control energy. There are those that want to create
their entitlement to energy consumption and the right to deny it to
others. The WTO is an example of what confirming historic levels
means: those who gave farm subsidies can keep giving them, but it is
prohibited to those that did not. We are not fools and we do
not expect a different result. Errare humanum est,
perseverare diabolicum.
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