China has emerged for the second year running as the world leader in providing greenhouse gas emission credits, said experts from the World Bank on Thursday.

that's like saying that criminal acts provide society with the opportunity to implement the rule of law, or give christians the chance to "turn the other cheek."

china "provides" the world with greenhouse gas emission credits by allowing the world to pay china to attenuate its destruction of the environment by investing in the development of technologies (CDMs) which reduce emissions.

perhaps the global community should develop a cap-and-trade scheme for civil rights abuses. then many of these same countries could receive credits for helping china implement means of curtailing such abuses.

what a racket!

Carbon trading:

You and I are in a sealed house and there is some garbage near me. I pay you to accept the garbage in your area of the house. But given time, I will still smell the garbage.

The Earth is the sealed house and carbon trading (as well as other types of pollution credit trading) only spread the stuff around while financial services industry makes more profits by charging service fees and commissions, etc.

And China, despite being a larger CO2 emitter (among other more dangerous substances) than ANY developed country, gets to make money hand over fist because they are a developing country (despite only being the third country in the world to have a manned space program).

The human race does indeed deserve to suffer for such self-delusions.

B. and Nanheyangrouchuan: you not understand how it works. As long as the credits are properly administered, the system does result in a net decrease in pollution, and a huge economic boost for clean technologies. Of course corruption and bad management can render the system useless, but that is why the emissions credits are so tightly controlled.

the system does result in a net decrease in pollution, and a huge economic boost for clean technologies.

Oxygen girl: i suspect that both nanheyangrouchuan'r and i understand quite clearly how CDMs work within the context of the Kyoto cap-and-trade scheme.

CDM-driven investment in china is certainly better than nothing, as you've pointed out. but why should the alternative be nothing? why shouldn't china be subject to emissions caps? wouldn't that result in an even greater net decrease in pollution while at the same time encouraging an additional economic boost for clean technologies, since the chinese government would then have a financial incentive to invest in its own emissions-abatement technologies rather than importing same from the so-called developed world?

@b.

Apparently Oxygen girl is unaware of the tank reactor concept. The human race lives in a closed room. Pollution reduced in one part of the world to allow an equal increase in another does not create a net reduction. Pollution travels the globe through the air, water, food and export/imports.