Today's Stories

September 9, 2009

Richard Neville
Trigger-Happy in Afghanistan

September 8, 2009

Henry A. Giroux
The Corporate Stranglehold on Education

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Accused of War Crimes Opposes Investigations

John Ross
Rituals of the Absurd

Jeff Leys
Health Care vs. Warfare: the Future of the Afghan War

Mike Whitney Ashcroft: Repugnant to the Constitution

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Empty Labor Day Speech

Ellen Brown
Did Lehman Brothers Fall or Was It Pushed?

Norman Solomon Men With Guns: In Kabul and Washington

Deepak Tripathi
The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

Laray Polk
Personality Cults, Indoctrination and Inculcation

Charles R. Larson
Just Who Does He Think He Is?

Website of the Day
The President is Not a Guidance Counselor

September 7, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Obama's Mistakes in Health Care Reform

Bouthaina Shaaban
In Praise of Admiral Mullen

David Macaray
Obama's Labor Day Report Card

Paul Craig Roberts
Indefensible Nation

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Ads Warn Against Marrying Non-Jews

Conn Hallinan
Brazil Flexes Its Muscles

Walter Brasch
The Origins of Labor Day, the Unknown Holiday

Mark Weisbrot
IMF Gives Honduran Government $175 Million

Carl Finamore
China's Birthday Stimulation

C. G. Estabrook
Advance Text of Obama's Big Speech

Website of the Day
One Down, 20,000 to Go

September 4-6, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Deeper Into the Tunnel

Carl Ginsburg
Saving New Orleans' Charity Hospital

Jonathan Cook
The Missing Link in Israeli Organ Theft?

George Wuerthner
The Unintended Consequences of Wolf Hunting

Marc Levy
The Bling They Curse and Carry

Ray McGovern
Holbrooke's Afghan Benchmark

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
It Happened in Miami

Joe Paff
Organizing the Mission

Gareth Porter
Taliban's Tank-Killing Bombs Came From CIA, Not Iran

Devin Beaulieu
Scaremongering About Bolivia and Islam

Anthony Papa
Why Leslie Crocker Snyder Should Not Become New York City's New DA

David Ker Thomson
Love and Dekes in Utopia

Don Fitz
The Case of the Biodevastation 7: What the Police Won't Apologize For

Lee Sustar /
S. Sepehri
The Fallout From Iran's Elections

Jim Goodman
Why Honor Organized Labor?

Wajahat Ali
Domestic Crusaders: Making Muslim American Theater

Ron Jacobs
Agitator Journalism: Remembering Ramparts

Helen Redmond
The Lion Sleeps Tonight: the Crimes and Misdemeanors of Teddy Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Obama to Cindy Sheehan: Get Lost

Charles R. Larson
Mandanipour's Masterpiece: Censoring an Iranian Love Story

Mark Scaramella
Ho-Bleeping-Hum: a Few Well-Chosen Words About Valerie Plame's Book

David Yearsley
Cameron Carpenter's Amazing Organ Transplants

Ben Sonnenberg
Hooking, Breaking Friendships, Cross-Dressing and, Above All, Delphine Seyrig

Poets' Basement
Davies, Orloski and Bready

Website of the Weekend
Architectural Semiotics with Glenn Beck

September 3, 2009

Marcus Rediker
Inside Auburn Prison

Ron Jacobs
Embedded With the Taliban

Mike Whitney
How Bad Will It Get?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Untold Story of the Cuban Five: Indictment À La Carte

Saul Landau
Moby Dick and Asian Typhoons

Anat Matar
Israeli Academics Must Pay a Price to End Occupation

Tanya Golash-Boza
How Immigration Enforcement is Weakening National Security

Dave Lindorff
Which Side Are You On?

Andy Worthington
The Story of Gitmo's Two Syrians

Website of the Day
Plundering Appalachia

September 2, 2009

John Ross
Mexico's Plagues

Vijay Prashad
Hey Ram, the Things the Financial Times Group Does!

Rev. Jim Rigby
Why is Universal Health Care "Un-American"?

Joanne Mariner
What the Inspector General Found

Missy Beattie
Hejira: At Martha's Vineyard with Cindy Sheehan

Soren Ambrose
Multilateral Money

Diane Farsetta
Water: the Newest Wave of Corporate "Social Responsibility"

Nadia Hijab
Mulling Mullen's Message

Shamus Cooke
How to Lower the Deficit Without Killing Social Security

Charles R. Larson
Is Dick Cheney Running Scared?

Website of the Day
Inside the Egg Hatchery

September 1, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Wolf at Trout Creek

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?

Mark T. Harris
The Whole Foods Boycott: It's About More Than CEO Hypocrisy

Dean Baker
Bank Profits Are Up: Did You Hear Anyone Say, "Thank You"?

Jeffrey Buchanan
Ending the Human Rights Crisis in KatrinaRitaVille

Robin Mittenthal
A Sea of Monocrops: Old MacDonald Never Had a Farm Like This

Ellen Brown
Mercury Mischief

Martha Rosenberg
Vytorin Marketing is Back

Website of the Day
Crazy Town Hall Protester Interviews

August 31, 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the SEC's Revolving Door

Anthony DiMaggio
What Obama Isn't Telling You About Afghanistan

Bouthaina Shaaban
Israeli Bodysnatchers

Ray McGovern
The Press and Torture: Covering for Cheney?

Joseph Shansky
Scenes of Resistance in Honduras

Greg Moses
The Dying Dillos of Austin

Brian McKenna
Pig Sacrifice and Swine Flu Panic

David Macaray
The Tender Trap

Brenda Norrell
Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon

Paul Craig Roberts
The Environment Loses a Champion

Beth Sherouse
Why I'm Going to the Big Gay March in Washington

Website of the Day
The Failure of the Left Antiwar Movement

August 28-30, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Teddy Kennedy the Hollow Champion

Joshua Frank /
Jeffrey St. Clair
From the Ledge to the Edge: How Tre Arrow Became America's Most Wanted Environmental "Terrorist"

Steve Early
Kennedy's Sins Against Labor

Michael Hudson
Learning About Financialization the Hard Way

Carl Ginsburg
Bernanke in Obamatime

Saul Landau
The Nuclear Gang Rides Again

Dave Marsh
Trapped Again: Michael Jackson's Crossover Dream

Mike Whitney
Band-Aids for the Recession

Dave Lindorff
Obama's War

José Pertierra
A Decision in the Posada Case

Joe Bageant
Obama's Fake Fight for Reform

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Spies Without Espionage

Lee Sustar
On Strike for Health Care Justice

David Ker Thomson
Life in the 'Shed

David Rosen
The Silent Slaughter: Sex Wars and Nation-Building in Iraq

Alison Weir
Israeli Organ Harvesting

Ron Jacobs
Will There be Free Speech in Pittsburgh?

David Swanson
Bush Tortured

Udi Aloni
An Appeal to Israeli Filmmakers

Charles R. Larson
Children During Wartime

Kim Nicolini
District 9: Science Fiction of the Now

David Yearsley
The Wagner Cult in Seattle

Lorenzo Wolff
Riding the Rails with King Curtis

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Marc Beaudin

Website of the Weekend
The Hidden History of Katrina

August 27, 2009

Andrea Peacock
Bearly Making It: How Many Biologists Does It Take to Count a Dead Grizzly?

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Incapacitating the Cuban Five

Ray McGovern
Closing in on the Torturers

Gideon Levy
The Last Refuge: Neve Gordon and the Boycott of Israel

Shamus Cook
World Bankers Agree: the Recession is Over ... Maybe

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Gap

Marshall Auerbach
We Already Have a Public Option

Benjamin Dangl
Reclaiming a Continent

Kathryn Gray
The Water Privateers

David Macaray
Please Buy Our Beer (And Join Our Union)

Website of the Day
Stop the Privatization of Ocean Fisheries

August 26, 2009

Gareth Porter
The Leaking Game: Planted News Stories About Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Dave Lindorff
Getting Away With Torture: Holder's Limited, Modified Hangout

Dean Baker
The Reappointment of Bernanke

Laura Carlsen
The Coup and Honduran Women

Paul Craig Roberts
When the Government Comes First

Laura Raymond /
Bill Quigley
Haiti One Year After the Hurricane

Jordan Flaherty
Still Homeless, Still Struggling in New Orleans

Jonathan Cook
The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque

Robert Bryce
Bamboozled About Energy

Danny Weil
The Future of Charter Schools

Cindy Sheehan
Farewell, Senator Kennedy

John V. Walsh
Cindy Sheehan's Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

Website of the Day
The President's Laugh Line

August 25, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Danny Weil
The Charter School Hype and How It's Managed

Martine Bulard
China's Wild West

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
The Cuban Five: The Face of Impunity

Bélen Fernández
Why Didn't the Leopard Eat Tom Friedman?

August 24, 2009

Danny Weil
Obama and Duncan's Education Policy: Like Bush's, Only Worse

Neve Gordon
Stopping the Apartheid State
Boycott Israel

John Ross
Mexico's Supreme Court Tosses a Bombshell into Chiapas

Open Letter to Kenneth Roth
Why Has Human Rights Watch Fallen Silent on Honduras?

Dan Bacher
A Burston-Marsteller Greenwash:
Westlands Hoards Surplus Water While Farmers Suffer

August 21-23, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Right Wing's Prince of Gonzo

Patrick Cockburn
The Truth About Afghan Election

Ray McGovern
Unwritten CIA Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Carl Ginsburg
Paycheck President

Dave Lindorff
American Justice is Not Blind, But it is Truly Sick

M. Shahid Alam
An "Abnormal" Nationalism

Ron Jacobs
The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

Eric Walberg
Russia/Georgia/U.S. One Year Later
Who Came Out Ahead

No War on the Moon!
In Defense of the Dark Side of the Moon

Gilad Atzmon
The Hostage Dream: Loving Oneself at the Expense of Another

Crawdad Nelson
What It's Like to Die

David Yearsley
Why I Chose to Play Scarlatti on Bainbridge Island

Justin Frew
Grim Times for Irish Travelers

Website of the Day
Picket Whole Foods Friday!

August 20, 2009

Eugenia Tsao
Inside the DSM:
The Drug Barons' Campaign to Make Us All Crazy

Dave Lindorff
The Worst and the Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

Yonatan Preminger
The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies

Wajahat Ali
The Detention of Shah Rukh Kahn

Website of the Day
How to cope with flu pandemics

August 19, 2009

David Michael Green
Guess What? He's a Terrible President

Paul Craig Roberts
Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs

Marshall Auerback
Debt Revolt? Tax Strike? There are a Lot of Angry People Out There

Franklin Lamb
AIPAC Sends in the Clowns

John Ross
Three Amigos Summit

Marjorie Cohn
Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

August 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Specter of Debt Revolt Is Haunting Europe?

Mary Lynn Cramer
Obama-Fraud: Don't Confuse Medicare with Single-Payer

Jonathan Cook
U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Israel's New Separation Policy

Uri Avnery
Whose Acre?

Ralph Nader
Block Obama's Abject Surrender to Insurance and Drug Companies

Bill Quigley & Davida Finger
Katrina Pain Index - 2009

August 17, 2009

Ray McGovern
Can the Washington Post Save Dick Cheney?

Andy Worthington
Bagram Isn't the New Guantánamo, It's the Old Guantánamo

Patrick Cockburn
Life and Death in Baghdad as Americans Leave

Don Fitz
The True Story of Fox's Hero, Kenneth Gladney

P. Sainath
Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds

Helena Cobban
Zionist Pioneer Renounces Zionism

August 14-16, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Health Plans and Death Plans

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fall of the House of Stanford

Peter Linebaugh
The Commons, the Castle, the Witch and the Lynx

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in Fatah's Elections?

Marshall Auerback
Why a Debtor's Revolt Would Work

Mike Whitney
Bulletins From Clunkerville

Paul Krassner
Woodstock at Forty

Saul Landau
Health Care and the Seeds of Disunity

Nikolas Kozloff
Colombian Elites Fear Bolivaran Revolution

Henry A. Giroux
Politics After Hope

John Ross
Sleepwalking Through the Minefield

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Land Sale

Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's Man in the Obama Administration

David Rosen
Sexual Torture, Yet Again

Ron Jacobs
Unconditional Negotiations, Now!

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Immigration Reforms: Neither Humane Nor Thoughtful

David Macaray
Prison Games

Greg Moses
Down in South Texas: the Geometries of Bob Dylan

Charles R. Larson
Egyptian Economics 101

David Yearsley
Stalked by Bill Evans' Ghost: Kind of Blue at Fifty

Lorenzo Wolff
There Ain't Much to Country Livin': the Drive-By Truckers and the Fine Print

Kim Nicolini
Class, Race and Clint

Poets' Basement
Reiss, Ford and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Timidity and Transparency

August 13, 2009

Eduardo Galeano
I Hate to Bother You

Joanne Mariner
Letting Cheney Off the Hook

Michael Donnelly
Burning Forests for Electricity

Norman Solomon
When the Dead Have No Say

Russell Mokhiber
Boycott Whole Foods

Tim Wise
Sick Heil! The Hitlerizing of Obama

Brian M. Downing
Succession and the Pakistani Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Single-Payer and Medicare

David Manning / Miriam Cotton:
Iran Versus Honduras: a Subtle Difference

Martha Rosenberg
John Hughes, Gone With Only 59 Candles

Website of the Day
Congress Can't Find Their As-teroids

August 12, 2009

Michael J. Watts
Nigeria on the Brink

Bouthaina Shaaban
Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families?

Ricardo Alarcón
The Cuban Five: Justice in Wonderland

Binoy Kampmark
Terror Australis

Paul Craig Roberts
Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

Alan Farago
Going Down Absurd: the Future of Florida Bay

James Ridgeway
Ghostwriting Your Meds

Dave Lindorff
10 Questions to Ask If You Find Yourself at an ObamaCare Town Hall Meeting

David Macaray
Labor and the Conventional Wisdom

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Assimilation of Niranjan Ramakrishnan

Website of the Day
A Petition in Support of Janice Harper

August 11, 2009

Ricardo Alarcón
Forbidden Heroes

Marshall Auerback
America's Biggest Economic Problem?

Reza Yavari
Inside Iran's Most Infamous Prison

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Tim Wise
Red-Baiting and Racism

Uri Avnery
A Moral Person

Deepak Tripathi
Getting Away With Torture

Greg Moses
Time to Plan for the Worst

Benjamin Dangl
Boycotting Big Beer

Dave Lindorff
Hecklers Unite! Why Aren't Progressives Disrupting ObamaCare Town Halls?

Website of the Day
What Bush Told Chirac About the Iraq War

August 10, 2009

David Price
Trial by FBI Investigation

Mike Whitney
There is No Recession; It's a Planned Demolition

Alan Farago
Seeds of Destruction: How the National Economy was Wrecked by the Politics of Deregulation in Florida

Conn Hallinan
The Honduran Coup: a U.S. Connection

Russell Mokhiber
Health Care: In Defense of Disruption

Paul Krassner
The Mystery Behind the Manson Murders

Sousan Hammad
Orgy of the Dead: the 2009 Fatah Conference

Jonathan Cook
Israeli School Apartheid

Ira Glunts
Netanyahu's Sister-in-Law Detained by Israeli Police; Calls Evictions an Unjustified Folly

George Wuerthner
Dead Tree Hysteria

Website of the Day
Conyers: ObamaCare is Crap

August 7 - 9, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
It Pays to Have a Nuke

Mike Whitney
Economy on a Scaffold

Elaine C. Hagopian
Obama's Israel Albatross

Carl Ginsburg
RX For Healthcare

Miguel Tinker Salas
Honduras is Only Part of the Story: the Conservative Counter-Attack in Latin America

Saul Landau
The Kidney Broker and the Money Laundering Rabbis

John Ross
The Mexican Genome: Big Science in the Service of Indian Genocide?

Anthony DiMaggio Obama and the Israel Lobby: Origins of Power

John Stanton
Expanding Human Terrain Systems?

Christopher Brauchli Legal Absurdities: Outing Three Strikes

Wajahat Ali
A Muslim American Hero: an Interview with Dave Eggers on "Zeitoun"

Ron Jacobs
As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

Franklin Lamb
Sunday Morning on the Dunes: Cleaning "Free Gaza Beach"

Bruce E. Levine
Protect Us From Our Friends

Michael Winship
Neighborhood Watch for Planet Earth

David Macaray
Glimmers of Hope for Labor?

Stephen Fleischman
Suicide Squad

Robert Bryce
Unplugging the Next Big Thing: the Hype Over Electric Cars

Robert Dodge, MD: Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered

Mark Seth Lender
The Message of the Glossy Ibis

David Yearsley
Vaucanson's Faun and the Duck in the Attic

Ben Sonnenberg
Chris Fuller's Brilliant Debut

Lorenzo Wolff
When Music's the Character

Poets' Basement
Dominguez and Corseri

Website of the Weekend
Warren Buffett's Betrayal

August 6, 2009

Ishmael Reed
Let's All Have a Beer

Paul Craig Roberts
The Expiring Economy

William Blum Assassinations and Coups: Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes

Michael Donnelly
Rod Coronado: the Hardest Working Man in Animal Rights "Terrorism"

Jonathan Cook
Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables"

Dave Lindorff
The Health Care Reform Sell-Out

Ellen Brown
The Public Option in Banking

Website of the Day
Ellsberg on Hiroshima

August 5, 2009

Dedrick Muhammad /
Barbara Ehrenreich
The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Norman Solomon
The Incredible, Shrinking Health Care Plan

William Blum
The Myths of Afghanistan: Past and Present

Gareth Porter
The ISI and the Taliban: US Officials Are Protecting Pakistani Aid to Taliban

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Myth of Medicare for All

Jim Goodman
Obama Needs to Take a Stand on Trade

Nadia Hijab
Playing From Strength in the Middle East

Gretchen Kroth
Guatemala's Garbage Dump Education System

Steve Macek /
Scott Sanders
Privatizing the Airwaves

Sarah Lazare
Inside G.I. Resistance

Website of the Day
The Locavore Myth

August 4, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Shell Game

Dave Lindorff
The Recession Isn't Over, By a Long Shot

Patrick Cockburn
Did British Bomb Attacks in Iran Provoke Hostage Crisis?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Campaign to Silence Human Rights Groups

Jeff Sher
Making a Mess of Health Care Reform

Dean Baker
Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo as Hotel California

Uri Avnery
A Jeremiad

Mark Weisbrot
U.S.-Brokered Mediation in Honduras Has Failed

Alvaro Huerta
Hold That Dustbin! So Much for the "End of Racism"

Website of the Day
Pentagon to Ban Facebook and Twitter?

September 9, 2009

Pulse of the Planet

Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses

By MELISSA CHECKER

Whether you’re a climate change denier or doomsayer, an avid recycler or rabid consumer of plastic bottles, there is one very good but little-known reason to oppose carbon offsets: their immediate and dire human costs. Offset opponents have always maintained that using them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is like trying to lose weight by paying someone else to go on a diet. But I argue that even more critical is that fact that such proxy schemes present human dangers on both sides of the equation.

Briefly, offsets are based on the idea that greenhouse gases mix rapidly throughout Earth’s atmosphere -- fewer emitted in one place makes up for greater emissions someplace else. Offsets originated with the Kyoto Protocol. In order to make carbon reductions more palatable, Kyoto negotiators established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by which industries in developed nations could cut their emissions by investing in programs in developing nations that reduce, avoid, or sequester CO2 or other greenhouse gases in some other place. As an extra bonus, those programs were also supposed to stimulate sustainable development. Offsets rapidly became a popular alternative for industries unwilling or unable to reduce their own emissions. Experts predict that the CDM will deliver more than half of the European Union’s planned carbon reductions to 2020. In addition, a secondary carbon offset market (known as “the voluntary market”), for individual consumers and businesses not obligated by Kyoto, reached $705 million in 2008. With the likely passage of the U.S. climate change bill, those numbers are expected to skyrocket.

But mounting evidence shows that carbon offset projects often create more problems then they solve for the communities that host them. Moreover, an exclusive focus on greenhouse gas emissions means that other highlytoxic releases are often overlooked. I recently compiled some of these findings and took them a step further by tracking the path of offsets generated by some well-known projects from the site of their production to the industries they benefited. As it turns out, the trail of carbon offsets might be washed in green, but from start to finish, it is lined with human rights violations.

From the Mountains of Uganda to the Mountains of US Appalachia

Mount Elgon, Uganda offers one of the more well-documented examples of an offset project that went awry for a local community. But further research reveals that problematic human rights issues extend far beyond Mount Elgon, all the way to the U.S. Appalachian states.

The case begins in the Netherlands in 1990 when the Dutch Electricity Generating Board vowed to surpass Kyoto Treaty goals partly through offsetting its emissions. In 1994, the Board established a non-profit offshoot known as the Forests Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Emissions (FACE) Foundation. FACE then partnered with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) to plant 25,000 hectares of trees inside Mount Elgon National Park. In exchange for financing the planting of the trees, FACE received the rights to the carbon sequestered by those trees – estimated at 2.11 tons of CO2 over 100 years. While the trees have thrived (especially in areas where agriculture had been encroaching on them), a number of research reports have found that the people surrounding the tree plantations have had the opposite experience.

A year before the FACE-UWA project began, the Ugandan government declared Mount Elgon a National Park. In so doing, it evicted approximately 6,000 people (some of whom had been living there for 40 years), giving them nine days to vacate their homes. A year later, UWA took over management of the Park, which entailed protecting the biodiversity of the area, managing the carbon plantations and securing the park’s borders. Evicted villagers, who were left homeless and without access to land to graze their cattle or grow subsistence crops, attempted to continue using park land, prompting UWA rangers to respond with violence. For instance, a 2006 World Rainforest Movement report details villagers’ descriptions of UWA rangers committing rape, arson, shootings and other violent acts. According to the report, villagers retaliated by throwing stones, burning trees, and sabotaging rangers’ vehicles.

In addition, villagers complain that the forest project has not lived up to its commitment to sustainable development. Initially, project leaders promised to employ local people to work in the national park and tree nurseries. However, local council officials contend that the project employs very few people and most of the jobs are only available during the planting period. To this day, the UWA continues to prevent local people from using the land, and violence and retaliations continue, despite a 2005 court ruling that an area of the national park should be set aside for villagers to live on and continue farming. To be fair, land disputes on Mount Elgon predated the FACE Foundation’s offset project, and the UWA maintains that the offset forest has nothing to do with its conflict with surrounding villagers. At the same time, the funding generated by the project likely provided additional incentives and justifications to administer evictions and violently patrol the area.

If we follow some of that funding and track the carbon credits generated on Mount Elgon, we find a maze of corporations, subsidiaries, and carbon-emitting ventures (indeed, one of the major criticisms commonly leveled at carbon trading schemes is that they create an opaque web of financial instruments ripe for corruption ). For example, the FACE Foundation is a non-profit organization, but the offset reductions generated by its projects are marketed by a Dutch for-profit partner, known as the Climate Neutral Group (CNG). CNG sells credits to over 500 businesses. It also partners with another for-profit company, Green Seat, which sells offsets (including those created on Mt. Elgon) exclusively to individuals and corporations wishing to balance out emissions from airline travel.

After several major news outlets reported on the violence on Mt. Elgon in 2007, Green Seat posted a notice on its website claiming that neither it nor CNG used offsets from Uganda forestry projects any longer. The FACE Foundation also claimed to have stopped planting trees in the park and to be disengaging from the project. "At this stage we don't get any carbon credits for this project," Denis Slieker, director of the FACE Foundation, told the LA Times in 2007, "We do not plan to expand anymore in Mount Elgon before these matters are resolved." Yet a recent visit to the FACE Foundation’s website describes the Mount Elgon project as “on going.”

Although after 2007, it is unclear exactly what kinds of carbon-production the Mount Elgon project offset, it is certain that it has enabled the building of at least several coal-fired power plants. First, the FACE Foundation was initially established to offset emissions from a new 600 MW coal-fired power station in the Netherlands. Second, CNG customer Enesco is one of the top three energy companies in the Netherlands. Considered to be a particularly “green” energy company, in 2008, Greenpeace ranked Enesco the “cleanest” power company in the Netherlands. On January 1, 2008, the company proclaimed that its internal business operations were “100% climate-neutral”. Yet, my research revealed that 61.2% of the company’s energy supply comes from natural gas, a fossil fuel, and 19.7% -- nearly one-fifth -- comes from coal. Importantly, one quarter to one third of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide come from burning coal. Additionally, coal plants produce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, mercury and arsenic (among other pollutants).

Even if the Ugandan project were able offset the climate harm generated by coal-fired power plants, it would not be able to offset the human costs of coal mining. In fact, the Netherlands closed all of its coal mines in 1974 due to their dangerous conditions. Yet, in 2008 the country imported 3.6 million short tons of coal from the U.S. making it one of the world’s top coal importers. The global demand for coal has expanded a controversial method of coal extraction, known as mountaintop removal, which uses explosives to blast away a mountain peak and expose coal seams. While coal companies claim the practice is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining, critics contend that it has already ruined more than 500 mountains while dumping tons of toxic waste into streams and valleys, and that its blasts are driving nearby residents (those who can afford to move) from their homes. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by 2012, mountaintop removal projects in Appalachia will have destroyed or seriously damaged an area larger than Delaware and buried more than 1,000 miles of mountain streams.

Without foliage and natural layers of soil, the land is rendered unable to retain water. As a result, floods carrying highly toxic debris have increased. For instance West Virginia resident Maria Gunnoe’s home sits directly below a 10-story valley fill that contains two toxic ponds of coal mine waste. Before mining began, Gunnoe’s property was not prone to flooding, but since the mine became operational, her property has flooded seven times, covering her land with toxic coal sludge. In 2007, Gunnoe and her colleagues at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) won a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that repealed some permits for mountaintop removal “valley fills” (the practice of burying streams under mining debris) in southern West Virginia and banned the issuance of new permits. But less than two years later, the Corps defied the federal judge’s orders and granted permits to construct two new valley fills above Gunnoe’s community.

The battle over mountaintop removal continues into the Obama Administration. During his 2008 campaign, President Obama expressed concern about mountaintop removal projects, and in June the EPA signed an interagency plan to regulate it. However, a month earlier, the EPA stated that it would not block 42 of 48 mine projects under review, including some of the most controversial mountaintop mines. Obama has also been a proponent of so-called “clean” coal technology, which captures the carbon released by coal-fired power plants. Yet this technology does not address the immediate dangers of the mining process, itself. Here again, an emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions provides an excuse for ignoring other kinds of environmental hazards. Moreover, the coal industry and its lobbying power remain strong, thanks in part to carbon offsets, which facilitate the production of coal-fired power plants and the demand for coal. In fact, international coal lobbyists are currently working to establish clean coal projects as certified carbon reduction programs.

To summarize, we return to Mount Elgon where the human ramifications of carbon offsetting are clear – the offset forest intensified existing land disputes and accelerated displacement, violence and impoverishment among local villagers. If we then follow some of those offsets to their buyers, we eventually find certain Dutch energy companies whose portfolios include coal-fired power plants. Tracking the coal firing those plants, we come to the Appalachian region of the U.S., where it is extracted at great cost to local communities. In short, this carbon offset trail – from Uganda to Appalachia – is lined with immediate and real threats to human rights to health, safety and well being.

From Eastern Scotland to Eastern Brazil

On the East Coast of Scotland, one of Europe’s largest oil refineries flares excess gas into the sky, sending sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other particles into the nearby town of Grangemouth. Six thousand miles away in eastern Brazil, the villagers of Sao Jose do Buriti struggle against rapidly diminishing water sources and the disappearance of plants that they have subsisted on for generations.

About ten years ago, a foundry near Sao Jose do Buriti threatened to switch from using charcoal to carbon-intensive coal, due to a dwindling supply of charcoal-producing eucalyptus trees. Enter the World Bank, which gathered funding from various sources and initiated a project to expand the foundry’s eucalyptus forest and generate carbon offsets. British Petroleum (BP), then owners of the Grangemouth refinery, had already invested in the World Bank fund as part of a major effort to “green” their image. BP was also able to continue to operate Grangemouth and still adhere to national carbon emissions standards by counting the Brazilian offsets as emissions reductions.

However, in Sao Jose do Buriti the eucalyptus trees’ enormous roots almost immediately began to soak up vast amounts water, drastically lowering the water table for the entire area. Villagers now had to travel increasingly far to find water, as well as traditional subsistence and medicinal plants. In addition, the tree plantation relied on herbicides and pesticides, which local farmers claim killed crops and poisoned streams. Furthermore, the water shortage destroyed some small businesses that had been in families for generations. Finally, a 2008 report by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network notes, “Perhaps more seriously, groups allege that Plantar pressured local residents to sign letters of support for the project or forfeit employment at the plantations.” Those who did publicly oppose Plantar claim that they and their family members were either threatened, or coerced into working for the plantation.

Meanwhile, Grangemouth, which is one of Europe’s largest oil refineries, emits sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and small particulate matter into the air. In addition, officials at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have cited the refinery as "one confirmed source" of an oil slick covering several square miles of the Firth of Forth. Grangemouth residents have long complained about high rates of asthma, as well as the smells and noise coming from the plant. The refinery has a similarly noxious track record on a social level: in late April 2008, the Unite union (Grangemouth’s workers’ union) became embroiled in a dispute with the refinery’s current owner, INEOS, over pension policies. The union accused the company of buying assets and then cutting costs by introducing new working practices, lowering wages, and terminating pension schemes.

But the offset trail does not end in Scotland. As in the previous case, offsets bolster the business of multiple multinationals. For example, in 2005 BP sold Grangemouth to INEOS, the third largest chemicals firm in the world, for GBP 5.1 billion. INEOS has come under fire for its involvement in another carbon offset project with its own set of human rights violations. The same year it acquired Grangemouth, INEOS partnered with Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited (GFL), a company in Gurjarat, India that produces HCFC 22, a refrigerant gas for air conditioning units and refrigerators. GFL wanted to institute a program to capture and recycle HFC 23, a potent greenhouse gas that is a byproduct of producing HCFC 22. INEOS supplied the technology for the program, and both companies received the right to claim the carbon reductions. However, residents of Gujarat claim that the factory has made them sick with joint aches, bone pains, unexplained swellings, throat and nerve problems and temporary paralysis. A recent investigation by the UK’s Daily Mail found “dangerously high levels of fluoride and chloride” in local water and soil (according to their report, fluoride in the water was more than twice the international acceptable limit). But these chemicals do not contribute to global warming. Thus, those monitoring the program considered it successful in so far as it reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2005, the CDM Executive Board approved the Gujarat project and awarded INEOS and GFL an undisclosed number of Certified Emission Reduction units (CERs) over time (INEOS’ website predicts that together with a second, similar project in Korea, the Gujarat project will generate 3 million tons of CERs annually ). Both companies were then free to sell their CERs to industries in danger of falling short of their national emissions caps. In 2006, GFL made news for doubling its sales revenue by selling a record number of carbon credits. The Daily Mail reports that it then used some of the proceeds from those sales to build a Teflon and caustic soda manufacturing facility – both are highly polluting processes.  

This example thus illustrates another way in which carbon credit schemes violate human rights -- by creating dangerously perverse incentives for polluters to continue to pollute.  First, carbon offset schemes reward corporations for lowering greenhouse gas emissions while allowing other highly, and deadly, toxic emissions.  Second, GFL’s handsome profits from capturing HFC-23 have inspired other HCFC-22 to follow suit, drastically lowering the cost of its manufacture. Experts predict that soon, a global over-reliance on the chemical, itself a powerful greenhouse gas, will result.

To conclude, this case has ramifications for human rights across the globe. Most directly, offsets allowed the continued pollution of the Grangemouth community, and they introduced new hardships for people in Sao Jose do Buriti. More indirectly, the notion that Grangemouth’s emissions were being neutralized made it an attractive asset that increased the profitability of its various owners, enabling them to invest in other toxic projects. In the case of INEOS, I propose that purchasing Grangemouth made it an even more powerful player in the petrochemicals industry which in turn made it better able to fight off opposition from workers or local communities, or perhaps to lobby for the certification of new kinds of climate change reductions. As well, the acquisition may have bolstered the company’s ability to continue financing its investments in other offset projects such as the GFL-23 program.

At the same time, this case also demonstrates how awareness about carbon offset projects’ trails of tears can connect communities in very tangible ways and catalyze collective action. For instance, in 2003 activists opposed to the Sao Jose do Buriti project attracted the attention of global NGOs, which helped local activists disseminate information about their situation. Eventually, Carbon Trade Watch (a project of the Transnational Institute) initiated a project to connect residents of Sao Jose do Buriti and Grangemouth through the exchange of video diaries. As the resulting documentary film depicts, residents of both communities reacted powerfully to a new awareness of their connected plights and spoke of newfound determination to continue their local struggles. In Scotland, the video diaries inspired one participant first to become an activist with Friends of the Earth and then to run for local office.

Thus, while offsets link communities around the globe in extended chains of emiseration, they also bring new opportunities for transnational alliances and partnerships to challenge market-based solutions to climate change. Fostering such opportunities, though, requires a concerted and well publicized stripping of the green veneer in which offsets are currently washed. Only then can we reveal the ecological and social tarnish hidden beneath and implement alternative solutions.

Conclusions

The need for such efforts is urgent. Certainly, not all offset projects violate human rights as egregiously as some of the cases presented here. But these examples are also the tip of an impending iceberg – carbon markets now trade over US $1 billion annually, and the climate bill currently under debate in the US Congress could send those numbers soaring.

Such prosperity creates ever more perverse incentives to pollute. For instance, in Nigeria, energy companies routinely disregarded a national law prohibiting the flaring of methane gas, a practice that creates acid rain, ruins crops, and causes respiratory and skin diseases for local people. Now, those companies can receive offset dollars for recycling the gas (and complying with the law) thanks to the CDM Executive Board’s recent decision to certify programs that fund the enforcement of existing laws to curb greenhouse gases, if local governments are unable to afford enforcements without offset financing.

This December, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to revisit and renew elements of the Kyoto Protocol. They will also consider certifying several new carbon offset mechanisms, including biofuels, forest conservation, and clean coal programs, although climate scientists have questioned the value of all of these initiatives in mitigating climate change. Even worse, all of these programs have been known to threaten the health and well being of surrounding communities.

As the Senate debates the Waxman Markey bill, and in the months leading up to Copenhagen, we have a narrow but important window of opportunity to redirect the course of climate change mitigation. Myriad non-market based solutions to climate change exist which promote rather than violate human rights. Given the stakes of the system currently in place, we have no choice but to establish more humane and effective alternatives.

Melissa Checker is an assistant professor of Urban Studies at City University of New York, Queens College.  She is the author of Polluted Promises: Environmental Racism and the Search for Justice in a Southern Town (NYU Press, 2005). In addition to a number of articles on the subject of environmental justice, she also co-edited Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life (Columbia University Press, 2004).

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