Polluters Pose as Saviors at Copenhagen [1]
Submitted by Bob Burton [2] on
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a European lobbying industry watchdog, notes that the largest non-government delegation at the COP15 [3] conference in Copenhagen is the 486-strong squad from the International Emissions Trading Association [4] (IETA). IETA's delegation is headed by the group's CEO, Henry Derwent [5], and includes representatives from member companies [6] such as the Russian gas giant, Gazprom [7], the global electricity and gas company, EON [8] and the oil major, Shell. One [9] of IETA's "key messages" for the COP15 conference is that "business must be engaged in the reform of existing and design of new" market-based mechanisms "so that investments can grow and a wider array of countries can benefit." IETA is one [10] of the candidates for CEO's Angry Mermaid award for its role in promoting carbon offsets [11] via the Clean Development Mechanism [12], a scheme established under the Kyoto Protocol [13]. Offsets have been criticized for rewarding projects which don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond those which would have occurred without the scheme.