When protocols collide - carbon credits funding skin cancer
The Kyoto Protocol is all about reducing carbon emissions.
The Montreal Protocol is all about curbing the gas emissions that damage the ozone layer so that we don’t all get skin cancer.
Now Rajendra Shende, director of ozone issues at the United Nations Environment Programme (which administers the Montreal Protocol) is calling foul, claiming that the Kyoto carbon trading scheme is perversely subsidising an increase in the Ozone depleting refrigerant gas HCFC 22.
What happens is that folks in the West are paying money through “carbon trading” to salve their carbon conscience. Quite a lot of that money is going to Indian and Chinese industry to help pay for the cost of destroying greenhouse gases. One of these - HFC 23 - is a waste product that is produced in the course of manufacturing the ozone-destroying refrigerant HCFC 22.
So carbon credits are making it cheaper to produce ozone-unfriendly gases, and the consequence is, as you would expect, that production of those bad guys is increasing.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions“!