It appears that they have discovered that outright fraud is destroying carbon trading.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, one out of every five carbon credits that’s been issued by the United Nations may be bogus in the sense that the projects being credited for reducing emissions are in fact increasing emissions.

The justification for carbon trading has been that speculative markets will magically find truth and the best way of doing things.

The real justification is that people with MBAs can create complex instruments that generate them lots of fees for doing things that do not benefit the public, or achieve the stated goals of the program.

Basically, this is gambling, and Wall Street sets itself up as the house. It’s what the FDR era regulations were supposed to minimize, and what 30 years of deregulation, starting under Carter, have given us.

It’s a system that encourages phony numbers and lying to generate fees and profits.

Carbon trading is a carbon tax, they both serve to raise the cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

The only difference is that the former benefits Wall Street types, and the latter benefits everyone, so under today’s morality, the former is good, and the latter is bad.