🤑 Carbon Credit Rigging: Technocratic Thailand⏳(Part 2)

Carbon border adjustment mechanisms, carbon credits pay-to-play, green deal APAC mission creep.

Against the stone breakwater,
Only an ominous lapping,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the mountain,
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
the lamp pole.

Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain. - Verse one of ‘The Storm’ by Theodore Roethke.

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Continued from part one.

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Carbon ponzi

For context on any regionalised or nationalised “green plans”, we should first draw from the outstanding investigative journalism of Whitney Webb.

Writing on the Unlimited Hangout site in November 2021, Webb described the green transformation of the global financial system as follows:

The most powerful private financial interests in the world, under the cover of COP26, have developed a plan to transform the global financial system by fusing with institutions like the World Bank and using them to further erode national sovereignty in the developing world.

The piece lays out the key players pushing this agenda amongst the UN, the IMF, the world bank, and an institution called the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).

You can direct your gratitude towards these four individuals for spearheading the report template for “net zero” literature, which we have seen cascade down and adopted into national frameworks across multiple countries.

Source link.

Webb surmises:

On its creation, GFANZ stated that it would “provide a forum for strategic coordination among the leadership of finance institutions from across the finance sector to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy” and “mobilize the trillions of dollars necessary” to accomplish the group’s zero emissions goals…

Though GFANZ has cloaked itself in lofty rhetoric of “saving the planet,” its plans ultimately amount to a corporate-led coup that will make the global financial system even more corrupt and predatory and further reduce the sovereignty of national governments in the developing world.

I would certainly class Thailand as being part of the developing world, as far as government infrastructure goes, along with social and economic development. This is part and parcel with the country’s vulnerability to selling off national interests for profit sharing, as well as a possible genuine belief in the climate alarmist greenwashed delusion.

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Carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM)

This handy dandy acronym is the brainchild of the EU. The sneaky little devils.

Alas, we’d best go straight to the horse’s hellhound’s mouth to find out about this new ponzi scheme.

According to their website, the European Union’s priorities from 2019-2024 have a segment focused on Building a climate-neutral, green, fair and social Europe.

Investing in green initiatives that improve air and water quality, promote sustainable agriculture and preserve environmental systems and biodiversity. Creating an effective circular economy (where products are designed to be more durable, reusable, repairable, recyclable and energy-efficient) and a well-functioning EU energy market that provides sustainable, secure and affordable energy. A faster transition to renewables and energy efficiency, while reducing the EU’s dependency on outside energy sources. Implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights.

On the face of it, it’s hard to argue with such noble-sounding buzz-word language, isn’t it?

Whilst the destination sounds utopian, the journey is most certainly dystopian and undoubtedly designed to decimate living standards by design, whilst consolidating power into the hands of multinational companies, ‘stakeholders’, and governments which are wholly on board. Ergo, those willing to sacrifice their citizens for profit, and squander the future generations of would-be-dreamers, in return for non-negotiable serfdom.

Source link.

Wayback machine link.

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is our landmark tool to put a fair price on the carbon emitted during the production of carbon intensive goods that are entering the EU, and to encourage cleaner industrial production in non-EU countries. The gradual introduction of the CBAM is aligned with the phase-out of the allocation of free allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to support the decarbonisation of EU industry. 

By confirming that a price has been paid for the embedded carbon emissions generated in the production of certain goods imported into the EU, the CBAM will ensure the carbon price of imports is equivalent to the carbon price of domestic production, and that the EU's climate objectives are not undermined. The CBAM is designed to be compatible with WTO-rules.

Could one reason for the EU forcing trade partners to play along with this CBAM scam, be that those countries will be quicker to legislate their own versions at a national level, and perhaps mimic and emulate this elsewhere - BRICS, anyone?

The whole premise of paying carbon credits in lieu of meeting green targets, or receiving ‘deductions’ because of being ‘green’, just gives any players carte blanche to be both lax on actual environmental pollutants from production or waste disposal, whilst leveraging monopolistic power over small to medium sized businesses that can’t pay-to-play.

As Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said in 2020:

2020 must be a year of climate action where everybody’s in, and that includes the world’s leading financial center. Disclosures of climate risk must become comprehensive, climate risk management must be transformed, and investing for a net-zero world must go mainstream.

I was interested in the concept of CBAM (complete bullshit authoritarian madness), because it has been doing the rounds on Thai media.

Link to article.

The CBAM, which will take effect in a transitional phase on Oct 1 this year, initially applies to imports of certain goods and selected precursors whose production is carbon intensive and at the most significant risk of carbon leakage, namely cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity, and hydrogen.

The policy will require all exporters of CBAM commodities to start reporting on emissions from the fourth quarter of this year. Once the permanent system enters into force in January 2026, importers will need to annually declare the quantity of goods imported into the EU in the preceding year and their embedded greenhouse gas. They will then surrender the corresponding number of CBAM certificates.

The fix is in.

The article concludes:

"We expect APAC [Asia-Pacific] exporters to embed long-term consideration in advancing clean technologies to minimise carbon costs, while momentum may also rise for more carbon trading schemes across the region," said Ms Jingwei.

Remember what I suggested about Thailand mimicking and emulating this carbon nonsense elsewhere, after being ‘forced’ to comply with CBAM by the EU?

Link to article.

Nava Chantanasurakon, chairman of the FTI's Iron and Steel Industry Club, said the EU's CBAM will definitely affect Thai exports, specifically production industries that use fossil fuel-based energy such as cement, steel and glass. He said these industries are speeding up studies on alternative energy sources, though investment in green energy is capital-intensive and the FTI had already asked the government for financial support to reduce the private sector's expenditure.

The big lie perpetuates more lies, which creates unnecessary markets, which actually harms the environment, and ultimately stagnates gross domestic product (Germany is already committing economic suicide with all the greenwashing nonsense).

James Rickards, writing in the Daily Reckoning described our surrealist reality on actual climate change rather succinctly:

Climate change is real but it’s slow and powerful and has nothing to do with trace gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane. It’s caused by the interaction of complex systems such as sun cycles, ocean currents, wind patterns including the jet stream, volcanic activity, salinity levels (in turn caused by ocean current subduction) and other mega-systems over which humans have no control.

I concur James.

Back to Thai media gushing over carbon:

Link to article.

Companies that are not ecologically aware can face penalties, while those that seek to limit environmental damage may gain certain advantages…

Carbon credit trading allows companies to sell carbon credits from reduced emissions to other organisations that want to lower emissions, but are unable to reach their reduction targets.

Last year, SET-listed Energy Absolute (EA) signed an agreement to sell carbon credits from its battery-powered buses to the Switzerland-based Foundation for Climate Protection and Carbon Offset, widely known as the Klik Foundation.

The amount of carbon credits sold to the Klik Foundation was not revealed.

We can see that the selling of carbon credits is already happening from Thailand-based entities to Switzerland-based entities.

But what does the buying and selling of carbon credits actually mean by the definitions of the gamemasters who invented this charade?

We can cite Iain Davis’ work, writing about The Impossible Energy Transformation in January 2023:

If you believe in the climate crisis and the assumed need to reduce global CO2 emissions, this all sounds reasonable. Reasonable, that is, until you discover how this global market operates. 

The UN believes, in keeping with its Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that there is no need for developed nations to reduce their carbon emissions to meet SDGs:

These mechanisms - Emission Trading, the clean development mechanism (CDM) & the joint implementation (JI) - ideally encourage greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) abatement to start where it is most cost-effective, for example, in the developing world. It does not matter where emissions are reduced, as long as they are removed from the atmosphere. This has the parallel benefits of stimulating green investment in developing countries and including the private sector in this endeavour to cut and hold steady GHG emissions at a safe level. It also makes leap-frogging—that is, the possibility of skipping the use of older, dirtier technology for newer, cleaner infrastructure and systems, with obvious longer-term benefits—more economical.

In 2018, Carbon Market Watch (CMW) released a report which highlighted what “sustainable development” meant for people living in developing nations as they leapfrogged over a safe and reliable energy supply:

In Uganda, a private company blocked access to land vital for the livelihoods of local communities in order to claim credits for planting forests in that area. In India, a waste incinerator project diverted waste from landfills, where it would get sorted by local informal workers, and burned them in a facility located close to villages. In Chile and Guatemala, hydroelectricity projects exacerbated land right conflicts, destroyed social cohesion within villages, and damaged ecosystems and biodiversity.

In part 3, we will look at corporate forestry conservation projects in Thailand, and the dubiously sketchy valuations given to carbon sequestration resulting in carbon credits to be traded on the open market. We will also examine the pollution problem in Thailand, and how it is being highjacked for net zero agendas.

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Let us end with verse two of The Storm (poem):

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

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