back to article Copenhagen forest-saving plans to create 'carbon refugees'

Climate-change reduction measures to be debated at the imminent Copenhagen UN climate conference could cause a "humanitarian crisis" and create huge numbers of starving, homeless "carbon refugees" in poor nations, according to an Earth-sciences prof in Leeds. The measures which concern Dr Simon Lewis - of the Earth and …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. breakfast Silver badge
    Alert

    Alternatively

    ... Or the logging and burning could continue and all the forest people could live happily in their ash-filled wasteland of scorched tree stumps. Good thinking prof!

  2. John Savard

    Beneficiaries

    The main reason we want to fight climate change is because of its devastating effects on people in the world's poor countries. It hurts us a little - invasive species in the south-western U.S., fires in Australia - but the main threat to the developed world is the long-range threat of a rising sea level, and the possibility of an ice age triggered by the Gulf Stream being switched off.

    So any scheme that has the potential to encourage corrupt dictatorships to harm their poor (or, worse yet, ethnic and religious minorities) must indeed be safeguarded against that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      John Savard - invasive species in the south-western U.S

      You ARE talking about the folks going into the US from mexico and points south?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    And this is news?

    Rich nations shaft poor nations in order to sustain their excessive lifestyles.

    Nowt new there.

    1. Raving
      Happy

      Karma

      Poor nations shaft rich nations with burgeoning populations and cheap labor that catalyzes their own hyperinflation of consumption.

  4. Cameron Colley

    Absolute crap!

    Why the hell should the money go to people whose livelihoods could be ruined by laws based on fabrication? Why should we help the people whose land we exploit?

    No, instead we should give money to the friends of politicians and put it towards herding the populations of Western countries and killing the populations of those countries in the Middle East who we're not friends with this week.

    After all -- what's the point of the climate change con if politicians and their mates can't get rich off it?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Carbon trading is futile

    Its just another market where people pass around their 'carbon rights'.

    What it doesn't do is reduce anything.

    This whole carbon debate is fairly futile anyway given the religious nature its getting to.

    Perhaps if we were looking at ways to cut out waste and encourage sustainability then it might work more, but there are too many people making too much money from killing the planet.

  6. null 1
    FAIL

    Climate Kool-Aid

    So you guys in England have consumed your full ration of climate kool-aid huh? Enjoy your carbon allowances, new taxes, and totalitarian control over your lives! Get back to me when you can prove that "Anthropogenic Global Warming" is the proximate cause of the suffering in the third world (absurd) or anywhere else.... The only thing constant in this world is change. Get used to it. The idea that the world could or even should be kept in climatological stasis is ridiculous.

    1. Cameron Colley

      Ithink most of us stuck in this dictatorship agree.

      You certainly won't have any arguments from this dweller of the scum-filled second world dictatorship of The People's Free Democratic Republic of The United Kingdom of Great Britain.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing like new and progressive pretexts for exterminating the natives.

    What what old boy. White Man's burden, but call it something else.

  8. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    Flame

    A conference in Copenhagen?

    It's a lovely city, but... haven't these people heard of mailing lists and video-conferencing? What's with this ridiculous policy of holding endless bloody conferences with all their friends when there are perfectly good internet and telephone networks covering the globe?

    How about these politicians and ecolytes cease flying hither and yon, polluting the planet while bruiting their hypocritical, unproven buillshit to all and sundry, shut the hell up, and save some damned carbon while they're at it?

    It's worse than all those pop stars and other celebrities who rant on about how "just $20000 will sponsor a school in Africa!" (Is that all? Gosh! How convenient: YOU have far more money than that; how many schools are YOU going to save then, Mr. Bono?)

  9. Luther Blissett

    Something not quite right here

    Catharsis is supposed to happen before you get religion - not after you've had it good for a few years.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Wait, what? This sounds bogus.

    >"Without careful planning REDD stands to create large numbers of 'carbon refugees' as governments curb financially unrewarding deforesting activities such as those of small-scale agriculturalist and fuel-wood harvesters who mostly pay no taxes on the products they produce," says the doc."

    It's hard to imagine how the planning could /possibly/ be so careless that it would end up curbing the activities of a few nomadic and tribal farmers - rather than the activities of the giant multi-national logging corporations besides whose activities the farmers' contribution to deforestation is an invisible gnat's todger.

    Rather I would expect it to be the other way round. Stop the mass-scale mechanized logging operations, and you'll get so much new forest growing back that there will be absolutely no need to worry about the villagers, and they'll all be delighted to have vast new tracts of forest to live in. It ought to make their traditional lifestyle far more secure than it is under the current threat from land invasions and environmental destruction.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Since when...

    Quote:

    "Without careful planning REDD stands to create large numbers of 'carbon refugees' as governments curb financially unrewarding deforesting activities such as those of small-scale agriculturalist and fuel-wood harvesters who mostly pay no taxes on the products they produce," says the doc."

    Since when has any government cared about inconveniencing people who barely subsist? I mean it's not like they pay taxes or make sizable election donations, nor can they afford lawyers to fight for them (when you can't afford to pay for food, you definitely can't afford lawyers).

    The professor's argument is much more likely to convince the governments to proceed with their carbon trading plans, than to dissuade them.

  12. lawman

    How many limos????

    Anthony Watts reports that the delegates for the Copenhagen AGW slutfest have ordered over 1200 limos to carry them around.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/07/december-7th-2009-a-day-that-will-live-in-hypocrisy/#more-13815

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like