Crunching credit and climate

摘要

'These are not good times for the fight against climate change', groaned an early January editorial in the leading Spanish daily El Pais, about the failure of the Copenhagen summit to agree on international carbon emission limits, and the subsequent failure of the French government to introduce a carbon tax. These events occurred in the aftermath of Britain's 'Climategate' scandal, where British and US scientists from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit were allegedly involved in the corruption and malfeasance of data which would have uncovered key flaws in their public claims on climate change; the decision by the Australian parliament to vote down legislation to set up a carbon emissions trading scheme; and an investigation by the European Police Office (Europol) of a ?5bn fraud by traders against the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).