Politics-As-Usual While Planet Burns

Politics-As-Usual While Planet Burns: American Clean Energy and Security Act Can’t Solve Climate Crisis

By Brian Tokar
From the July 24, 2009 issue
of the Indypendent

"Carbon offsets have become the postmodern version of the indulgences the Catholic church used to sell in the Middle Ages to buy your way out of sin. But on a global scale, with corporations instead of individuals as the main players, they have become a scam of gigantic proportions."

"Rather than promoting innovative measures to reduce energy use in poor countries, as they are usually advertised, carbon offsets are subsidizing the already routine destruction of byproducts from China’s rising production of ozone-destroying hydrofluorocarbons, minor retooling of highly polluting pig iron smelters in India, and methane capture from a notoriously toxic landfill in South Africa."

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