US Companies have used a questionable business practice of carbon credits

The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol eventually gestated a perverse incentive; companies find it cheaper to offset their greenhouse gas reducing

Stefano Valentino * / Tierramérica Special

Major U.S. corporations such as Dow Chemical, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Cabot Corporation, have used a questionable business practice of carbon credits to offset their climate pollution’s role in Europe, according to the following investigation.

Dow was the main buyer. The company has factories producing plastics and chemicals that emit carbon dioxide in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Holland and Poland. Meetings take place 21 among the top 100 European buyers of certified carbon emission reductions (CERs) arising from the 19 projects of dubious legitimacy.

The power generation settled down in the European Union (EU), some of them subsidiaries of U.S. companies are forced to cut greenhouse-gas pollution that cause global warming, by adopting cleaner technologies or offsetting emissions through the purchase of CRE.

Companies find it cheaper to offset their emissions to reduce them really. And the weaknesses of European standards, they can.

The CRE are fought under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that requires signatory industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

CRE each equal to one ton of carbon dioxide that was thrown into the atmosphere. And for the responsible delivery of an approved project, after certifying that the reduction actually took place. Then you can generate tradable instruments, subject to the laws of supply and demand.

The CDM was established by the United Nations Organization for industrial countries subsidize climate change mitigation in developing nations. But ended up creating a perverse incentive to maximize profits used a handful of manufacturing of industrial gases, mostly located in India and China, which obtained those 19 projects.

China Jiangsu Meilan Chemical’s and Navin Fluorine International Hindu, among others, pledged to capture and destroy HFC-23, a residue from the production of the refrigerant HCFC-22 (hydro chlorofluorocarbon), banned in the European Union and the United States because depletes the ozone layer.

HCFC-22 is also a super greenhouse gas, 810 thousand times more potent than carbon dioxide, and HFC-23 11 000 it is 700 times more.

But Indian and Chinese companies ended up producing more of that gas and getting a lot more CRE than necessary, according to research panel of experts in CDM methodology.

In June 2010, non-governmental environmental organizations CDM Watch, based in Bonn, and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA, for its acronym in English), based in London, discovered this blatant misuse of the CDM and provided evidence.

“Certificates of HFC-23 do not represent real reductions in greenhouse gases,” said Diego Martinez-Schuett, CDM Watch. “And buyers used these false reductions as permits to pollute more in Europe.”

The 19 projects of industrial gas destruction approved by the CDM accumulated nearly 500 million loans worth three thousand 300 million dollars. Nearly 90 percent of them flooded the EU, and constitute more than half of the total block offsets.

Between 2009 and 2010, U.S. corporations bought almost one million credits for HFC-23 at an average price of $ 16 per unit. Since then “spent” at least $ 16 million in alleged emission reductions.

The same behavior continued their European competitors such as BP and British Shell, RWE of Germany, Norway’s Statoil, the Spanish-Italian group Enel and France’s EDF.

The ten most popular transatlantic companies listed on the main global stock market joined Euronext NYSE-$ 254 million on these false claims, excluding 2011 data not yet published.

In June last year, European regulators decided to ban these CRE, but the measure will only be effective from May 2013. “The EU came under pressure from investors to postpone the ban, initially scheduled for January 1, 2013,” said activist Natasha Hurley, of the EIA.

Meanwhile, the door remains open for Dow, Shell and other polluting companies to acquire a further 53 million false CRE.

U.S. firms say they were unaware of the unlawful nature of HFC-23 credits before the discarded EU.

What matters now is “what will make buyers of these CERs to legitimize their compensation measures,” asked Rob Elsworth, of Sandbag, a nongovernmental organization that investigates the integrity of emissions trading and added up the figures used in this article to show the involvement of businesses.

The question was posed to several of these companies

“In recent years, we use these CERs to meet,” said the head of communications at Dow’s subsidiary in Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, Drea Berghorst. “We will continue to meet the standards, which means that we will stop using the CRE industrial gas in April 2013,” he said.

Chevron and Cabot responded similarly, without ruling out the option to buy more credits from HFC-23 while in circulation.

“Chevron respected and will respect all aspects required by European standards for emissions trading,” said Sean Comey, media consultant in the company’s world headquarters in California. The corporation took advantage of these credits to offset emissions from offshore oil which operates in Britain.

“We work with a prestigious financial agent, JP Morgan, to buy those CRE and ordered everyone to be certified and validated,” said Vanessa Apicerno, a specialist in media relations of Cabot’s headquarters in Boston.

The corporation used the CRE to offset pollution generated by their articles of carbon black and thermoplastic in France and Italy. ConocoPhillips, which used the credit for its refineries in Britain and Norway, declined to comment.

Now more than ever, companies have good reason to use shareholders’ money in investments that exacerbate climate change.

In fact, brokers are trying to sell the race remnants of these CRE before they become waste in 2013, and push the prices down. In February, prices were only six dollars a ton, after reaching a peak of $ 33.

“Companies are looking for the cheapest way to meet the standards. Market participants are free to have their ethical considerations about how to deal with climate change, but the system is governed by the economy, “said Richard Chatterton, analyst, Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Statistics show that the price difference is more important than the quality of the certificate.

“The common CRE (such as HFC-23) still constitute over 95 percent of the volumes traded in the future,” said Sara Ståhl, director of global markets for Green Exchange, a market operator dedicated to environmental derivatives. “And they are just 46 cents cheaper than our future plus CRE (non HFC-23).”

Considering the additional amount of CRE inflated supported by the EU until next year, we can estimate that savings to business will be about $ 24 million. The real question is whether these coins worth saving for corporations to save the real world from overheating.

* Published in accordance with Freereporter http://www.freereporter.info. This research was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Society of Environmental Journalists

Bangkok- Private Zoo found in a House more than 200 animals

Discovery of a private zoo with more than 200 animals

In a house in Thailand authorities found kangaroos, five tigers, 13 lions and two albino orangutans and other species

Rare Breed found in house in Saraburi

BANGKOK, March 9. – More than 200 animals, including kangaroos, five tigers, 13 lions albinos and two orangutans were seized by police in a private zoo inside a house in the central region of Thailand, local media reported Wednesday.

The agents, in an operation yesterday against illegal animal trafficking, also seized flamingos, red pandas, camels and lions at the residence of a former salesman of animals in the province of Saraburi.

The head of the operation, General Norasak Hemnithi said they located the zoo through the investigation of a network of illegal animal trafficking.

The owner, Yutthasak Sutthinon, has been accused of keeping protected animals without permits, which carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.

Yutthasak said he has relevant documents to be submitted later and explained that the red panda, albino pumas and lions come from Africa, Canada and South America.

Thailand, particularly Bangkok, is one of the largest traffic of endangered animals because it is in a strategic location between Burma, China, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Sex, limbs and duct tape: the marriage of Ben and Narcy Novack

Sex, limbs and duct tape: the marriage of Ben and Narcy Novack

BY JULIE K. BROWN The Miami Herald

Hoping to establish multiple motives for the murder of Ben Novack, allegedly by his wife, the feds plan to give jurors a lurid portrait of their marital life.

If a court brief filed by federal prosecutors is even partly true, Ben and Narcy Novack had a profoundly dysfunctional marriage — and a life of sex, limbs and duct tape would have made a South Beach madam blush.

Narcy, who faces trial next month in her hotel tycoon husband’s slaying, told the FBI and others that her husband was a pedophile who would give artificial limbs free to amputees in return for sex; that he arranged sham marriages as part of an immigration scam involving his exotic dancer mistress, and that he encouraged his wife to duct-tape him and abuse him during sex.

The court papers released this week contend that Narcy reported some of the behavior to police, the FBI and family members in the years before Ben’s murder.

Prosecutors intend to use her admissions and details of the marriage in general, to establish a “sick, vicious cycle” that drove her to kill her husband out of anger and greed.

The court papers also, for the first time, identify Ben Novack’s mistress, Rebecca Bliss, a tattoo-artist/exotic dancer whom he set up in a lavish apartment on Marina Bay Drive in Fort Lauderdale.

It is alleged that his doting on her infuriated Narcy.

According to the court papers and sources close to the case, Ben bought furniture for Bliss’ apartment, and when Narcy discovered the affair, she called Bliss’ landlord and told him to cancel Bliss’ lease because her husband was dead.

He was, in fact, very much alive at the time. Novack’s murder wasn’t until seven months later.

Narcy Novack, 55, remains in a Westchester County, N.Y., jail on charges of first-degree murder and racketeering in the executions of her husband and her mother-in-law, Bernice Novack, 86. Authorities allege that Novack and her brother, Cristobal Veliz, 58, of Philadelphia, orchestrated the murder-for-hire plots so that Narcy could inherit his estate, worth at least $10 million.

Three alleged accomplices, two of them hit men hired in Miami to do the killings, are cooperating in the case. They have provided details about Ben and Narcy Novack’s marriage that prosecutors say lend credibility to their narrative of the Novack murders.

Ben Novack, son of the man who built Miami Beach’s landmark Fontainebleau hotel, was found beaten to death on July 11, 2009, in his hotel in Rye Brook, N.Y., where he was at an Amway meeting he had booked as part of his $50-million-a-year convention planning business. His body, which was bound and gagged with his eyes slit, was found by his wife, a former stripper with whom he had a tumultuous 17-year marriage.

His mother, onetime queen of the Fontainebleau, was found dead in her Fort Lauderdale home three months before. Her death was initially ruled accidental by Fort Lauderdale police and the then-Broward County medical examiner. After Ben Novack was found dead, however, police were forced to reopen the case and eventually new evidence showed that she in fact had been beaten to death with a monkey wrench in her garage. What’s more, the court papers released this week reveal that the killers tried unsuccessfully to harm her in the weeks before the actual murder.

Novack and Veliz have pleaded innocent.

Prosecutors allege that Narcy and her brother told the hit men to kill Bernice Novack because she mistreated her daughter-in-law, that she encouraged her son to beat his wife, and that Bernice had once drugged her daughter-in-law.

Veliz also told one of the killers that Ben had a business involving artificial limbs that he used to lure amputees or their relatives into having sex with him in exchange for free limbs, engaging in “sick sexual habits.”

They also said that in 2008, a year before the murders, Narcy told the FBI that her husband was arranging sham marriages and that one of the sham brides in the scheme was Bliss, with whom he had been having an affair. That same year, Narcy also told a Mexican customs officials that her husband had illegally smuggled $10,000 into Mexico. When the FBI failed to take action against her husband, prosecutors said Narcy began to plot her husband’s murder in earnest, according to the court papers.

Prosecutors also intend to introduce evidence of a 2002 incident at Ben and Narcy’s Fort Lauderdale home in which Narcy handcuffed him to a chair and blindfolded him, leading him to believe they were about to engage in a bondage/sexual ritual that was a “mainstay of their marriage.” Instead, she slugged him in the face and removed property and thousands of dollars from the house.

Afterward, she told police that she was upset because her husband was having sex with amputees and that their marriage was so physically, sexually and emotionally abusive that she had left him as many as 50 times.

“That incident is no more sensational or disturbing than [these] crimes with which [Narcy] is charged,’’ prosecutors said in asking the court to allow the 2002 incident to be admitted at trial.

Prosecutors also allege that, in the months following the murders, Narcy Novack set out upon a shell game, moving valuable property, jewelry and other items that belonged to her husband and mother-in-law, illegally moving them in and out of various safe-deposit boxes in an effort to hide the assets.

Earlier this week, a lawyer showed up at a pretrial hearing for Novack in Westchester, N.Y., claiming he had several pieces of jewelry, worth up to $200,000, given to him by Narcy that she wanted him to use as payment for co-representing her. Her court-appointed attorney, Howard Tanner, was caught off guard by the move, as was the prosecutor, Elliott Jacobson, and the federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Karas.

Karas, visibly perturbed, reminded Novack that she had earlier pleaded that she had no money and that taxpayers were paying for Tanner to represent her. The estate’s assets have been frozen pending the outcome of the trial. Should Novack be convicted, she loses all rights to his fortune

Four year old boy killed his younger brother in Texas

Four year old boy killed his younger brother in Texas

four year old kills brother of 3 accidentally

According to research, the mother was in another room when she heard a gunshot and found the child with a gunshot wound

DALLAS, Feb. 22. – A four year old boy killed his younger brother with the gun after shooting according to his mother, according to the opinion issued today by the Police Department Killen community, north of Austin, Texas.

Police on Wednesday released the results of the investigation into the death of Kenneth Jordan Jones of three years, registered on 18 February, when the victim and his brother were in his mother’s bedroom.

According to investigators, the mother was in another room when she heard a gunshot and went to his room where she found Jordan with a gunshot wound to the upper chest and neck.

The woman had placed a nine-millimeter pistol in a closet, out of the reach of children, but somehow the little four-year gained access to the gun and shot his brother.

Police have not charged anyone so far, while the child’s name that fired the gun will not be released because he is a minor.