Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
60-hour work weeks, all in the name of climate change
Some politicians may be accused of dragging their heels when it comes to dealing with climate change, but you can’t say members of the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism’s executive board aren’t clocking in the hours.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an emissions trading scheme under the Kyoto Protocol worth $33 billion last year according to the World Bank, allows companies and countries to outsource their greenhouse gas reduction efforts by investing in clean energy projects in emerging countries like China and India, where making emissions cuts costs less.
Projects are submitted to the CDM for registration and a staff of over 100 examine and scrutinize each one to ensure environmental integrity.
The whole scheme is supervised by a 20-member executive board, chaired by Lex de Jonge of the Netherlands’ environment ministry.
“The members are all employed by governments and assigned to the board. They don’t get a salary from the UN but they receive a daily subsistence allowance to pay for meals, hotel and travel costs,” de Jonge said at the Reuters Climate and Alternative Energy Summit.
“As chair of the board, I spend 75% of my time on CDM issues and 25% on domestic issues relating to my actual job,” he added.
The CDM’s executive board holds some 7 to 8 week-long meetings a year, up from 5 meetings in 2005, the year international emissions trading really began to take shape.
First, the planet’s climate has always changed and will always change. Next, do politicians really think the best thing to do is freeze people to death? By raising the price of electricity that is what they are doing. Every stopped construction of a new nuclear plant or new coal facility means less electricity for heat. I do not have air and I do not care if people have to pay more for electricity for that but when I have to read about a mother using her electic stove for heat for her and her two children..and therby burning down her apartment, shame on you global warmists. Everyone who believes they are harming the planet by using fossil fuels should stop using them.