CARBON OFFSETS: SCAM, NOT SALVATION

Under a cap & trade scheme, a country (or company) can meet its emission targets by paying others to reduce their emissions. To facilitate this process, the United Nations created the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an international market where buyers who need to offset their emissions can purchase carbon credits from developing countries -- effectively paying for emissions reductions by others.

Unfortunately, proving that emissions cuts are reductions that wouldn't have occurred without the offset payments is difficult. Recent evidence reveals that offsets are vulnerable to fraud and actually increase costs:

• Almost three-quarters of CDM-registered projects are already complete at the time of approval and do not need carbon credits.
• Nearly 40 percent of those projects represent "unlikely or at least questionable" emissions cuts and between a third and two-thirds of CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.

Moreover, it's inherently difficult to measure emission reductions under a carbon offset project. Congress should avoid any such cap and trade schemes, -- they have proven expensive, ineffecive and open to fraud and abuse.

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