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Top 10 Censored Stories of 2009 Part 1
Compiled & Edited by Robert E. Martin
For 34 years Project Censored has been committed to bringing the most vital stories to public awareness with the belief that genuine democracy depends upon freedom of the press. Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, Project Censored is a media research program working in cooperation with various independent media groups throughout the U.S.A. and has trained over 1,500 students in investigative research. Project Censored conducts research to determine significant news stories that are either underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by U.S. corporate media. Each year, they release 25 stories out of over 1000 stories that are researched. The following five are those that I found to be most significant. Next edition we will cover five more, as well as look at under-reported and/or censored local stories.
1. U.S. Congress Sells Out to Wall Street. Sources: Truthout, October 2, 2008 Title: “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It” Author: Greg Gordon; Capitol Eye, February 10, 2009 Title: “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns” Author: Lindsay Renick Mayer; Rolling Stone, March 19, 2009 Title: “The Big Takeover” Author: Matt Taibbi Student Researchers: Jocelyn Rapp and Caitlin Ruxton (SSU) Faculty Evaluator: Samual Mikhail PhD Economics, Chip McAuley, PhD Indian River State College and Sonoma State University
Federal lawmakers responsible for overseeing the US economy have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. As senators, Barack Obama and John McCain received a combined total of $3.1 million. The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) money are the same members of Congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program. In total, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Senate Finance Committee and House Financial Services Committee received $5.2 million from TARP recipients in the 2007-2008 election cycle. President Obama collected at least $4.3 million from employees at these companies for his presidential campaign. Nearly every member of the House Financial Services Committee, who in February 2009 oversaw hearings on how the $700 billion of TARP bailout was being spent, received contributions associated with these financial institutions during the 2008 election cycle. “You could say that the finance industry got their money’s worth by supporting members of Congress who were inclined to look the other way,” said Lawrence Jacobs, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance. For instance, in 2004 when the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a major rule change that freed investment banks to plunge tens of billions of dollars in borrowed money into subprime mortgages and other risky plays, congressional banking committees held no oversight hearings. Congressional inaction also allowed mortgage agents to earn high fees for peddling loans to unqualified homebuyers and prevented states from toughening regulations on predatory lending practices. Author Matt Taibbi writes that some of the most egregious selling of the US government to Wall Street happened in the late nineties, when “Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more ‘business-friendly.’ Wall Street responded by flooding Washington with money, buying allies in both parties.” In the ten-year period beginning in 1998, financial companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Wise political investments enabled the nation’s top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry. In 1999, Texas Senator Phil Gramm co-sponsored the bill that repealed key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, which, since the Great Depression, prevented banks from getting into the insurance business. The very next year Gramm wrote sweeping new legislation called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which made it impossible to regulate credit swaps as either gambling or securities. Trading in risky credit was thus deregulated. In 1997 and 1998—the years leading up to Phil Gramm’s act that gutted Glass-Steagall—the banking, brokerage, and insurance industries spent $350 million on political contributions and lobbying. Gramm, then the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, collected $2.6 million in only five years. The law passed 90-8 in the Senate, with the support of thirty-eight Democrats, including Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Dick Durbin and John Edwards. The act helped create the too-big-to-fail financial behemoths like Citigroup, AIG and Bank of America—and in turn helped those companies slowly crush their smaller competitors, leaving the major Wall Street firms with even more money and power to lobby for further deregulation. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations have been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them under the completely secretive control of the financial sector. Taibbi points out that “While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions, but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments).” Taibbi continues, “This new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy. . . . No one knows who’s getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America’s credit rating. Moreover, no one can be sure that these new institutions are really temporary, or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders.” Taibbi concludes, “The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.” Fraud and crisis continue to deepen and expand with significant conflicts of interest in Congress and the executive branch of US government. Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist, says, “The finance industry has effectively captured our government.” Even as the federal government has continued to figure out ways to help the struggling finance sector and give the economy a boost, they’ve been collecting input from the very companies that have accepted taxpayer dollars and are, in part, being held responsible for the current crisis. But that’s not all they’ve collected—Congress has been busy fundraising from the finance sector, including those companies that received billions of dollars from TARP. The finance sector has, of course, continued to give money to candidates, party committees and political action committees. Since the start of 2009, Wall Street has donated $12.6 million—more than any other sector this year. And 58 percent of that has gone to Democrats, marking a change, perhaps, in political strategy. Not since the 1990 election cycle have finance, insurance and real estate companies given more than 52 percent of its overall donations to Democrats, and from 1991 to 2006 finance gave the majority of its money to Republicans. The 2008 personal financial disclosure reports with those answers are now available on OpenSecrets.org at: http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/search_cid.php.
2. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina. Source: CounterPunch, August 9, 2008 Title: “Pools of Fire” Author: Jeffrey St. Clair; Student Researchers: Krisden Kidd and Karene Schelert Faculty Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux, PhD Sonoma State University
One of the most lethal patches of ground in North America is located in the backwoods of North Carolina, where Shearon Harris nuclear plant is housed and owned by Progress Energy. The plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country. It is not just a nuclear-power-generating station, but also a repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants. The spent fuel rods are transported by rail and stored in four densely packed pools filled with circulating cold water to keep the waste from heating. The Department of Homeland Security has marked Shearon Harris as one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the nation. The threat exists, however, without the speculation of terrorist attack. Should the cooling system malfunction, the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown, putting more than two hundred million residents of this rapidly growing section of North Carolina in extreme peril. A recent study by Brookhaven Labs estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has estimated that there is a 1:100 chance of pool fire happening under the best of scenarios. And the dossier on the Shearon Harris plant is far from the best. In 1999 the plant experienced four emergency shutdowns. A few months later, in April 2000, the plant’s safety monitoring system, designed to provide early warning of a serious emergency, failed. And it wasn’t the first time. Indeed, the emergency warning system at Shearon Harris has failed fifteen times since the plant opened in 1987. In 2002 the NRC put the plant on notice for nine unresolved safety issues detected during a fire prevention inspection by NRC investigators. When the NRC returned to the plant a few months later for reinspection, it determined that the corrective actions were “not acceptable.” Between January and July of 2002, Harris plant managers were forced to manually shut down the reactors four times. The problems continue with chilling regularity. In the spring of 2003 there were four emergency shutdowns of the plant, including three over a four-day period. One of the incidents occurred when the reactor core failed to cool down during a refueling operation while the reactor dome was off of the plant—a potentially catastrophic series of circumstances. Between 1999 and 2003, there were twelve major problems requiring the shutdown of the plant. According to the NRC, the national average for commercial reactors is one shutdown per eighteen months. Congressman David Price of North Carolina sent the NRC a report by scientists at MIT and Princeton that pinpointed the waste pools as the biggest risk at the plant. “Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly and catch fire,” wrote Bob Alvarez, a former advisor to the Department of Energy and co-author of the report. “The fire could well spread to older fuel. The long-term land contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than Chernobyl.” The study recommended relatively inexpensive fixes, which would have cost Progress approximately $5 million a year—less than the $6.6 million annual bonus for Progress CEO Warren Cavanaugh. Progress scoffed at the idea and recruited the help of NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan to smear the MIT/Princeton report. McGaffigan is a nuclear enthusiast who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats. A veteran of the National Security Council in the Reagan administration, McGaffigan took a special interest in promoting nuclear plants to US client states. He served two terms as NRC Commissioner under Clinton as a tireless proponent of nuclear plant construction and deregulation, and consistently dismissed the risks associated with the transport and storage of nuclear waste. McGaffigan’s meddling has outraged many anti-nuclear activists. Lewis Pitts, an environmental attorney in North Carolina says, “The NRC has directed the production of a bogus study to deny decades of science on the perils of pool fires.” Author Jeffrey St. Clair concludes, “If the worst happens, the blame will reside in Washington, which has permitted the Shearon Harris facility to become a nuclear time bomb.”
3. Lobbyists Buy Congress. Source: Open Secrets.org Title: “Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy” Authors: Center for Responsive Politics. Student Researchers: Alan Grady and Leora Johnson Faculty Evaluator: John Kramer, PhD Sonoma State University
According to a study by The Center for Responsive Politics, special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008—more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase from 2007 (which broke the record by 7.7 percent over 2006). The Center calculates that interest groups spent $17.4 million on lobbying for every day Congress was in session in 2008, or $32,523 per legislator per day. Center director Sheila Krumholz says, “The federal government is handing out billions of dollars by the day, and that translates into job security for lobbyists who can help companies and industries get a piece of the payout.” Health interests spent more on Federal lobbying than any other economic sector. Their $478.5 million guaranteed the crown for the third year, with the finance, insurance, real estate sector a runner up, spending $453.5 million. The pharmaceutical/health products industry contributed $230.9 million, raising their last eleven-year total to over $1.6 billion. The second-biggest spender among industries in 2008 was electric utilities, which spent $156.7 million on lobbying, followed by insurance, which spent $153.2 million, and oil and gas, which paid lobbyists $133.2 million. Pro-Israel groups, food processing companies, and the oil and gas industry increased their lobbying expenditures the most (as a percentage) between 2007 and 2008. Finance, insurance and real estate companies have been competing to get a piece of the $700 billion bailout package Congress approved late last year. The companies that reduced lobbying the most are those that declared bankruptcy or were taken over by the federal government and stopped their lobbying operations all together. “Even though some financial, insurance and real estate interests pulled back last year, they still managed to spend more than $450 million as a sector to lobby policymakers. That can buy a lot of influence, and it’s a fraction of what the financial sector is reaping in return through the government’s bailout program,” Krumholz said. Business and real estate associations and coalitions were among the organizations that ramped up their lobbying expenditures the most last year. The National Association of Realtors increased spending by 25 percent, from $13.9 million to $17.3 million. The American Bankers Association spent $9.1 million in 2008, a 47 percent increase from 2007. Other industry groups that spent more in 2008 include the Private Equity Council, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America and the Financial Services Roundtable. The US Chamber of Commerce remained the number one spender on lobbying in 2008, spending nearly $92 million—more than $350,000 every weekday, and a 73 percent increase over 2007—to advocate for its members’ interests. Pro-business associations as a whole increased their lobbying 47 percent between 2007 and 2008. With record spending on lobbying, some industries face serious cut backs and have put the brakes on spending, but have not discontinued the practice. Automotive companies decreased the amount they paid lobbyists by 7.6 percent, from $70.9 million to $65.5 million. This is a big change from prior years; auto manufacturers and dealers increased lobbying spending by 21 percent between 2006 and 2007. Between 2007 and 2008 the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which testified before Congress with Detroit’s Big Three last year, decreased its reported lobbying by 43 percent, from $12.8 million to $7.3 million. Of the Big Three, only one company, Ford, increased its efforts, though not by much: it went from $7.1 million to $7.7 million, an 8 percent increase. Among Washington lobbing firms, Patton Boggs reported the highest revenues from registered lobbying for the fifth year in a row: 41.9 million dollars, an increase over 2006 of more than 20 percent. The firm’s most lucrative clients included private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, confection and pet food maker Mars, communication provider Verizon, pharmaceutical manufacturers Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche, and the American Association for Justice (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America). It seems like this should be a classified ad: “Laid off and looking for work? The lobbying industry wants you!” Since January, the lobbying industry has only continued to grow, even as industries across the board have continued to shrink, forcing hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work. (Editor’s Note: I wonder if State Representative Andy Coulouris responded to this ad? Coulouris recently accepted a lobbying position with Dow Chemical). This growth could be attributed in part to the economy itself—many executives are looking for some help from the government to keep their businesses afloat. Others are simply taking advantage of the opportunities that a spate of government handouts has presented. But as long as there’s a federal government calling the shots, lobbyists will be paid more and more each year to hold their clients’ fire to lawmakers’ feet. Year after year we see increases in lobbying expenditures—in fact, 100 percent over the last decade—and the flurry of activity during the first three months of 2009 indicates that the trend won’t come to an end any time soon. Based on records from the Senate Office of Public Records, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics found that from January through March, lobbying increased slightly compared to the same period of time last year, by at least $2.4 million. Unions, organizations and companies spent at least $799.7 million so far this year on sending influence peddlers to Capitol Hill, compared to $797.2 million during the same time in 2008. That might seem like a small increase compared to the billions spent each year on this activity, but in a time of economic turmoil, that’s a hefty revenue stream for a single industry. That said, the industries that have made the most headlines for the help they’ve asked for or received from the federal government actually decreased the amount they spent on lobbying in the first three months of 2009 compared to 2008. Recipients of cash from the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) handed out less money to lobbyists than they had in any quarter of 2008, in part, perhaps, because they faced new rules restricting their lobbying contact with officials in connection with the bailout program. CRP found that TARP recipients have spent $13.9 million on lobbying so far this year, compared to $20.2 million in January through March of last year and $17.8 million in the last three months of 2008. With the government doling out billions of dollars, these sums pale in comparison to the benefit the companies are reaping.
4. Bailed Out Banks & America’s Wealthiest Cheat the IRS Out of Billions. Sources: Bloomberg, December 16, 2008 Title: “Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1% or $14 Million” Author: Christine Harper; The Huffington Post, February 23, 2009 Title “Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration” Author: Thomas B. Edsall; Student Researcher: Valerie Janssen and Aimee Drew Faculty Evaluators: BC Franson, JD, SMSU and Robert Girling, PhD, SSU, Southwest Minnesota State University and Sonoma State University
A 2008 study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that eighty-three of the top publicly held US companies have operations in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. Fourteen of these companies, including AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup, received money from the government bailout. The GAO also reported that activities of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) are directly connected to tax avoidance. Swiss banking giant UBS has enabled wealthy Americans to use tax schemes—some of which are illegal— to cheat the IRS out of over $20 billion in recent years, according to the Department of Justice. UBS, a sponsor of the prestigious Miami Art Basel show, takes advantage of this public event to build relationships with the rich by helping them find ways to avoid paying taxes in the US. Art Basel Miami Beach is the most important art show in the United States, a cultural and social highlight for the Americas. Its sister event, Switzerland’s Art Basel, is considered the most prestigious art show worldwide. UBS uses the show to find clients looking for advice on tax shelters and how to take advantage of bank secrecy rules in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and other places. Other locations for hiding funds include Austria, Luxembourg, the Channel Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Andorra, Monaco, and Gibraltar. In the Caribbean, the established havens are the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands. Some of the newer countries with bank secrecy are the Cook Islands, Turks, and Calicos. For corporations the process of geographic tax avoidance is fairly simple. A US corporation will sell at reduced rates, even a loss to their own offshore subsidiaries, and then resell the products at higher prices, paying little or no taxes in the foreign country. In December 2008, the bank holding company Goldman Sachs reported its first quarterly loss. On the heels of this announcement, Goldman Sachs issued a statement confirming that its tax rate was dropping from 34.1 percent to 1 percent. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the US government in October 2008, expects to pay only $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008, compared with $6 billion in 2007. The New York-based Goldman Sachs cited “changes in geographic earnings mix” as the reason behind the decrease. According to US Representative Lloyd Doggett, the shifting of income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern. “The problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said, “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.” On February 19, 2009, UBS for the first time agreed to release to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) an as yet undetermined number of the names of bank account holders. Anywhere from just 250 to 19,000 of US taxpayers with Swiss bank accounts face the prospect of IRS examination of their bank documents with an eye to prosecution and/or civil litigation of the account holders. The DOJ has demanded UBS bank account documents for a total of 52,000 additional depositors. UBS and Swiss banking authorities are claiming that their guarantee of absolute banking privacy will somehow survive this attack—“Banking secrecy remains intact,” declared Hans-Rudolf Merz, Switzerland’s president and its finance minister. There is, however, much more money escaping taxation through entirely legal means—through provisions in the US tax code—and there is an accurate accounting of the revenues that are lost. Every year, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation puts out an illuminating but little-read document with the bestselling title “Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures,” subtitled this year, “For Fiscal Years 2008-2012.” 1. “International Taxation: Large US Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions,” GAO US Government Accountability Office, December 18, 2008, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-157. Update from Rachel Keeler, Dollars & Sense, May-June 2009 Issue: Over the years, trillions of dollars in both corporate profits and personal wealth have migrated offshore in search of rock bottom tax rates and the comfort of no questions asked. This was a significant contributing factor to international economic downturn in 2008. The G20 meetings in April of 2009 declared a crackdown on tax havens as the first step to financial recovery. However, the offshore banking world now harbors $11.5 trillion in individual wealth alone, and many countries will continue to resist regulation and inspections from outside their borders.
5. World Banks’ Carbon Trade Fiasco. Source: Upside Down World, February 11, 2009 Title: “The World Bank and Climate Change: Sustainability or Exploitation?” Author: Mary Tharin; Student Researchers: Victoria Masucci and Christine Wilson Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD Sonoma State University.
In the name of environmental protection, the World Bank is brokering carbon emission trading arrangements that destroy indigenous farmlands around the world. The effort to coordinate global action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions began with the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and now has been ratified by 183 nations. While many of the strategies established in the protocol are encouraging, some are proving to have fatal flaws. One such program, known as Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) investment, has become a means by which industrialized countries avoid reducing their own emissions through the implementation of “emissions reduction” projects in developing nations. In accordance with the Kyoto Protocol, many governments have established “caps,” or limits, on the greenhouse gas emissions that can be produced in their countries. Industries can respond to these government-imposed limits by responsibly reducing their emissions, or they can bypass this process entirely by purchasing “carbon credits” from other industries in other parts of the world who, through CDM investment brokered by the World Bank, trade emission reduction “credits” in order to “offset” excessive emissions. Joris den Blanken, a climate change specialist with Greenpeace, says, “Offsetting means exporting responsibilities to the developing world and removes the incentive for industry to improve efficiency or to invest in renewable energy.” While the World Bank claims that this system “supports sustainable development . . . and benefits the poorer communities of the developing world,” the program in reality has become little more than a corporate profit-boosting enterprise. In fact, many transnational corporations are using cap and trade programs not only to avoid emissions responsibility, but to further profit by developing environmentally and socially destructive industries in less developed countries. In Latin America, where a long history of corporate exploitation has already taken a steep toll, environmentalists and indigenous communities are beginning to speak out about the dangers of the CDM. Because of a myopic focus on greenhouse gas reduction only, and a lack of accountability to local communities, many projects are producing other environmental and social ills that are diametrically opposed to the program’s stated objectives. Nevertheless, the United Nations Environmental Program reports that, to date, 4,364 projects have been approved for CDM funding, and the movement continues to gain momentum. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the number of new project proposals has risen drastically in just a few years, from less than ten per month in early 2005 to about 100 per month in 2007. Wood and pulp industries have shown great interest in harnessing the carbon market to justify and finance projects that involve expropriating indigenous farm and grazing land for planting of enormous monospecific plantations. These plantations threaten the area’s biodiversity and can severely deplete water resources. Author Mary Tharin warns, “From an ecological standpoint, planting large-scale plantations of non-native species in this area is clearly a step in the wrong direction. From a societal standpoint, this could spell cultural genocide.” The World Bank touts the CDM as an “integral part of the Bank’s mission to reduce poverty through its environment and energy strategies.” However, in Latin America as in other parts of the developing world, the global carbon market is proving to be largely detrimental to the indigenous and the poor. With little or no input on how a project is conducted, local communities have virtually no control over how their land, water, and resources will be affected. While the World Bank pays constant lip service to the importance of sustainability and poverty alleviation in the CDM, it continually fails to deliver positive results for either the environment or disadvantaged communities in the developing world. The global carbon market is proving to be simply another weapon used by multinational corporations to accelerate their incursion on the rights of indigenous peoples and small-scale landholders in Latin America. Janet Redman at the Institute for Policy Studies says, “Farmers [in the global south] are trading communal land rights and their ability to feed themselves for the whims and price fluctuations of the international carbon market.” Meanwhile, the Clean Development Mechanism continues to expand. In May 2009 alone, 132 new CDM projects were submitted for approval, marking an all-time high in the application process. At the same time, more evidence is cropping up all over the globe that many “emissions reduction” projects in the developing world are doing more harm than good. In June 2009, the UK-based Daily Mail published an exposé on a UN-funded chemical plant that has poisoned the local water supply in Gujarat, India. According to Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch, large hyrdo and gas projects are the most damaging receivers of CDM funding. These projects, she argues, rarely save additional emissions and in fact provide perverse incentives to expand environmentally degrading industries. In the United States, debate over carbon offsets and cap and trade schemes has erupted since the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, was passed by the House Energy Committee in May 2009. While many environmentalist groups are heralding the bill as a huge step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, others point to the prominence of carbon offsetting in the bill as a way for corporations to skirt any real commitment to emissions reductions. According to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), up to 2 billion tons of carbon (about 30 percent of current US emissions) could be purchased as offsets under the legislation, half of which would come from developing countries through programs like the Clean Development Mechanism. While most of the mainstream media and many environmental groups have jumped on the cap and trade bandwagon, organizations such as the Institute for Public Studies, Carbon Trade Watch, and CDM Watch continue to boost public awareness on the dangers of cap and trade. A number of voices, including The Economist, have come out in favor of a Carbon Tax as a more effective way to motivate emissions reductions. These groups are calling for people in the developed world to take the lead by shrinking our own carbon footprints, and demanding a real solution to climate change that starts at home.
(This is the first of a two-part series).
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