Greenies Take Note: Farmers Murdered for Carbon Credits

It can't happen here. Or something.

Before carbon trading

However, in Honduras, 23 peasant farmers, among them a 15-year-old boy, were murdered for trying to recover land seized from them for use in the EU's carbon-trading system, the ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme). Those 23 farmers, plus a journalist and his partner, were shot, run over by automobiles, or simply "disappeared." 

Over at the United Nations, members of the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism), were so "personally distressed" that they washed their hands of "the situation."

After carbon trading

We had to take judgements within our rules – however regretful that may be – and there was not much scope for us to refuse the project. All the consultation procedures precisely had been obeyed.

They were just "following orders"--get it?

Similarly "following orders" are the 1200 Honduran police and military reportedly being moved into the murdered farmers' home region, Bajo Aguán in northern Honduras, where the rights of UN-accredited palm oil plantations to take over peasants' land are being disputed.

No doubt it is even more difficult to assess "climate projects" for human rights abuses in Uganda, where several children are reported to have been horribly tortured and killed by Ugandan troops busy following orders to "evict" (i.e., burn out and beat) villagers to facilitate potential trading of carbon credits by the "New Forests Company, "a British outfit backed by the World Bank that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the 'carbon credits' on to transnational corporations" considered "polluters" for emitting carbon into the atmosphere.

From Prison Planet: 

An Oxfam report documents how the British outfit has worked with the Ugandan government to forcibly expel over 20,000 people from their homes using terror and violence as part of a lucrative scramble for arable land that can be used to satisfy the multi-billion dollar carbon trading ponzi scheme, which is worth $1.8 million a year to the company.

From the UK Guardian:

Before carbon trading

Francis Longoli, a small farmer from Kiboga district of central Uganda, is tearful: "I remember my land, three acres of coffee, many trees – mangoes and avocados. I had five acres of bananas, 10 beehives, two beautiful permanent houses. My land gave me everything. People used to call me 'omataka' – someone who owns land. Now that is no more. I am one of the poorest now," he says.

More from Prison Planet:

Villagers told of how armed “security forces” stormed their village and torched houses, burning an eight-year-child to death as they threatened to murder anyone who resisted while beating others.

“We were in church,” recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. “I heard bullets being shot into the air.”

“Cars were coming with police,” Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. “They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.”

After carbon trading

It's worth considering that--dead or alive--both the perpetrators and the victims of the carbon-trading fiasco are, even now, emitting carbon into the earth and atmosphere. That's what carbon-based life forms do.
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