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Katy Yan
Campaigns Assistant
In my former life, I researched carbon footprints, integrated water management, and the intersection of art, activism and environmental education. Now as a blogger, I monitor the current carbon offsets craze, throwing in climate change and carbon financing to the web of interconnected earth systems that I explore, and in which we all belong.

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Home › In Hot Water

What's In a Name? Corker Mentions Our CDM Work in Congress

Mon, 02/02/2009 - 1:18pm

Bob Corker

Bob Corker

On January 28th, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker asked Al Gore a question on offsets as he gave testimony on climate to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker is an offsets skeptic and we (and Friends of the Earth) have been working with his staff to educate him about the CDM, or Clean Development Mechanism. His question to Gore referenced International Rivers and cited our consultant Barbara Haya's work showing that most approved CDM projects were already completed by the time of approval. Slight glitch when he flubbed the stat and said that the projects were "well under construction" (instead of fully completed, which they actually are) by the time of approval.

The exchange between Corker and Al Gore went as follows. (Can you find the error? Gore, by the way, was head of the US delegation in Kyoto that pushed through the CLEAN Development Mechanism.)


Sen. Corker: "As of November 1 2008, International Rivers has calculated that most of these offsets that are called Clean Development Mechanisms that I think hugely distort the market. Hugely distort the market. Most of the projects, three-quarters of them were already under construction and were going to happen anyway. So the whole issue of additionality is a pretty big deal..."

Gore: "Thank you. Another thoughtful question. I think there is general agreement that in Copenhagen significant reforms of the CDM, uh Collective Development Mechanism, ah Cooperative Development Mechanism, have to be implemented . . . I agree with ya."

Thanks to Corker for the question, and to Gore for illiciting some creative (and snarky) responses from other climate NGOs regarding what CDM really stands for:

Collateral Damage Mechanism

Clean Distribution Mechanism

Conflicted Distorted Muddle

Corrupt Distribution Mechanism

Climate Destruction Mechanism

Cognitive Dissonance Mechanism

Climate Debt Mystified

Can't Do Much

Cannot Doit Myself

What's your favorite?

 

Click here for the International Rivers press release.