Big Green really is the next green

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Dude is like Al Gore on steroids. Or, with all the jack that Algore stands to swim in, maybe it’s the other way around. Tough call.

What more is needed to be known about the faith-based AGW zealot wing of the Star Wars cantina scene than the fact that a choo-choo engineer with a doctorate in economics pretty much calls the shots with respect to AGW policy, worldwide?

Speaking of which, how did Copenhagen work out for ya, doc?

And speaking of what more is needed to be known, the EU’s Emission Trading System, which will be the model for any carbon credit trading system should cap and trade survive abortion efforts over here is one giant white collar crime-riddled sham.

The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading has fallen prey to an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion -- a massive fraud that lawmakers and energy experts say should send a "red flag" to the U.S., where the House approved cap-and-trade legislation over the summer amid stiff opposition.

In a statement released last week, the Europol police agency said Europe's cap-and-trade system has been the victim of organized crime during the past 18 months, resulting in losses of roughly $7.4 billion. The agency, headquartered in the Netherlands, estimated that in some countries up to 90 percent of the entire market volume was caused by fraudulent activities.

"These criminal activities endanger the credibility of the European Union Emission Trading System and lead to the loss of significant tax revenue for governments," Rob Wainwright, Europol's director, said in a statement.

We’re way passed “endanger”, pal. And one gets the feeling that the "loss of significant tax revenue for governments" is the real crime.

And something like this couldn’t happen over here because the value added tax (a Ponzi scheme in itself) that was part of the EU’s carbon trading market, won’t be part of the American cap and trade scheme? Think again.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said it's no surprise cap-and-trade systems are vulnerable to corruption.

Barton said he recently asked the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to unseal the court file of Anne Sholtz, a former environmental executive who co-created the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) in 1999. Sholtz's company, Automated Credit Exchange, provided a market for companies to buy and sell pollution credits under RECLAIM. In 2005, Sholtz pleaded guilty to wire fraud for using counterfeit credits to pocket more than $12 million. Sholtz was later sentenced to one year of house arrest. (Barton wrote about Sholtz earlier this year for TheHill.com.)

When the government attempts to set up an artificial market that the free market wouldn’t normally recognize, corruption and graft is sure to follow.

Here again, we see the nexus of fascism and crony capitalism, terms that are inescapable when you are discussing picking the winners and losers in the national and global Environmental-Industrial complex.