Where are your carbon credits now, Al Gore??

So, a study finally shows what many people have been thinking for a long time: carbon credits largely are a fraud.

Industry caught in carbon 'smokescreen'
April 25, 2007

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on "carbon credit" projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a "green gold rush", which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of business offering both companies and individuals the chance to go "carbon neutral", offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more that double in size to about $68.2 billion by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4 billion in the same period.

Most projects yield minimal impact, the money being spent usually results in negligible benefit other than a "feel-good" for the donor, and people who are living ridiculously extravagant lives - two people living in 10,000 square foot mansions with four figure monthly utility bills while flying around the country in 1/3 full charter jets - while lecturing the rest of us really aren't as environmentally friendly as they pretend to be. did anyone really believe otherwise? did we really believe that someone could use ten, twelve times the amount of utilities as the average American family and pay a small fee to buy some "carbon credits" and it would make their waste somehow go away?