Amid Proliferating Markets, E.U. Officials Draw Line On Forest Credits - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com

Last week the European Commission – which already oversees the world’s largest market for trading permits to emit carbon dioxide – seemed to say that there are limits.

The commission rejected the idea of accepting “credits” generated by projects to stop the permanent destruction of forests and woodlands until 2020 at the earliest.

It said the volume of credits from these projects could undermine its nascent CO2 trading system, and it expressed concerns about how it would be possible to monitor and verify that forests actually were being preserved.

Going green does more harm than good

Well, it doesn't. Even the idea of recycling waste in the fashion in which we do so in the country does more harm than good. With the exception of recycling metal, the recycling of common waste products results in more cost and pollution than simply throwing our trash into a landfill. Huge amounts of government money and manpower through various state prison systems are the only way that paper and plastic recycling can turn a profit. Furthermore, all of our paper products come from tree farms. Paper production is one of the few uses of renewable resources we have. Yet because of a lack of information and corruption, the US spends a ridiculous amount of money and generates a huge amount of waste to recycle paper.

Cash-strapped families face £1,000-a-year bill to help Government beat climate change | Mail Online

But Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, said: 'It is an incredibly inefficient way to do virtually nothing. If the UK managed to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent, it would mean postponing global warming by an order of less than a 500th of a degree. Is that really what the British population want to spend 2 per cent of its income on?'

The American Spectator: The Greeening of Thomas Friedman

Poor Thomas Friedman, he tries so hard. He wants to explain everything -- energy, poverty, world climate catastrophes -- and offer a comprehensive solution as well. The only problem [is] he doesn't much know what he is talking about.
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WHAT FRIEDMAN DOESN'T understand is that markets are a network of information. They inform us, in rapid and uncompromising fashion, about the availability of resources and the rewards for turning them to specific uses. Windmills and solar collectors remain a very bad investment for one reason -- they produce very little useful electricity. As an example it is only necessary to note Friedman's sorrowful history of First Solar ("Read it and weep!"), an Ohio company that invented thin photovoltaic films to capture solar energy on buildings. Although the company was funded at one point by John Walton, it eventually relocated to Germany in order to take advantage of a German law that forces utilities to buy solar electricity from any provider at a government-fixed price. "That is a no-brainer," exuded Mike Ahearn, First Solar's CEO.

But a no-brainer for whom? When we finally get down to details, it turns out that First Solar's annual production target is 25 megawatts worth of electricity. The average coal or nuclear plant now produces 1,000 MW and the newer ones get 1500 MW. It would take more than a hundred square miles of First Solar cells to match the output of the average power plant. The market is telling us that solar and wind are hideously expensive and then don't produce much electricity anyway. Every time the wind dies down or the sun goes behind a cloud the power goes out.

Of course that doesn't mean that Americans won't indulge in such folly. Late last month, Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida announced the cancellation of a 700-MW "clean coal" plant in favor of 10 MW of thermal solar power. The installation is supposed to expand to 300 MW at some point, although "a site has not yet been chosen."

The uniform disadvantage of all forms of solar energy is that they must consume vast, almost unthinkable, amounts of land. Biofuels suddenly tanked last winter when it was recognized that they are consuming one-third of America's corn crop, leveling whole tropical forests, and causing a world food shortage -- all to replace 3 percent of our oil supply. In fact, the only technology that can match fossil fuels while creating far less environmental disruption is nuclear power.