Subsidies for Forest Destruction and Land Grabs? Yep... that's the latest I'm hearing from Copenhagen. The idea is that polluters can buy "offsets" - an idea that makes some sense in theory. Get a little bit of carbon OUT of the atmosphere, then put that much carbon INTO the atmosphere, and you break even. Right? Except when offsets are used completely fraudulently, as it seems that they are (and plan to be under this new agreement in Copenhagen). For a basic understanding of this, I HIGHLY recommend watching the short animated online film The Story of Cap and Trade.
The news from a press release I've included below is that Copenhagen is paving the way for carbon offsets (called CDMs or Clean Development Mechanisms in the language of the agreement) that are totally bogus. This is very bad.
