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You might call it Greenmail
Ecuador has an idea for keeping millions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere -- pay us $3 billion, and we won't drill for oil in a certain area of the Amazon.
Today, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa said Germany has pledged $50 million a year for the next decade or so to stop Ecuador from tapping certain oil fields in the Yasuni region. From the Wall Street Journal:
Foreign Affairs Minister Fander Falconi said Ecuador is also in talks with France and Spain about financing the project, saying it had received a "great response" from them.
President Correa said the project will keep 850 million barrels - or 20% of Ecuador's proven oil reserves - under the ground. It will save 407 million metric tons of carbon dioxyde from being released into the atmosphere by avoiding deforestation, he added.
Germany hasn't publicly committed to the dollar figure or the time period, but it and other European countries have expressed serious interest in the deal. Environmentalists like it because it not only lowers CO2, but it also lowers the cost for a poorer nation like Ecuador to be more environmentally-friendly.
Correa's proposal would block drilling in three oil fields in Yasuni, but it does not explicitly prohibit development in the rest of the park. It was declared a biosphere reserve by the United Nations and is home to Amazon Indian tribes living in voluntary isolation.
Ecuador is an OPEC member that depends on oil for a third of its national budget.
The $3 billion represents about half the revenues Ecuador would make over 10-12 years of drilling. Ecuador also plans to ask the US to join in. Should we?
Egh, it looks pretty good on the surface. Combine donations to poor countries, saving the rainforest, and raising world-wide gas prices which should help speed development of alternatives.
Only problem is that all of it is extremely temporary. What happens in 10 years? Gas prices will be even higher, so Ecuador will have made out quite nicely, but the rain forest and CO2 levels 50 years out would look much the same.
Seems a better Idea to me to just pump the money in to alternative energy research or subsidies.
This might sound good at first, but long term it probably will cost more. Those countries that give Ecuador this money are only buying themselves a little bit of time and just transfering some of their national wealth to another country. Ecuador will STILL have those reserves to tap sometime in the future. If this scheme is going to work then the countries that pay should have a stake in those reserves as they, in effect, paid for them. I hope the U.S. does not decide to let it rain greenbacks in Ecuador, at least not mine.
The only problem I see with this scheme is that the government has no right to take your money and give it to Ecuador.
If the release of carbon dioxide is a provable threat to US interests (it isn't) then let them be consistent and stop it with military action. (They won't)
The German government's perspective is probably that it will cost less to pay Ecuador for the offsets than it would cost them to enact regulations to reduce domestic emissions.
Also, it doesn't have to be just governments. It could be from the sources of greenhouse gases. They could form cosortiums that transfer money from power plants and transportation fuel, oil, gas, coal, etc. to the offset, although, it is still going to raise the price of energy and someone is going to pay more.
