Entity Behind Kyoto Conned Public
by Judi McLeod & David Hawkins, Canada Free Press

We’ve all been had.

The bottom has long since fallen out of the key group that master-minded the Kyoto Protocol credit scheme, but nobody seemed to have joined the dots.

It all began with the flight of Canadian Maurice Strong’s Earth Council from Costa Rica as noted by the National Post’s Peter Foster in May, 2004.

With no fanfare, the Earth Council landed in CH2M Hill’s Consumer Road Toronto office towers.

The Costa Rican government has been pursuing the Earth Council for payment of U.S.$1.65 million, for the wrongful sale of a tract of land it imprudently donated to the Council. The land was donated to the Council by the Costa Rican government with the agreement that, if the Council moved, it would have to return the land.

It was in 1996 when Costa Rica granted the Council the land in question. All Hell broke loose when it was discovered that the Earth Council sold the land that was not theirs to sell in the first place.

"The government cried foul, and the Earth Council upped and departed the country, citing the drain of the legal fight." (Peter Foster, National Post).

Not only was the Earth Council forced to bunk up with CH2M Hill, their hasty departure from sunny Costa Rica also seriously impacted the University of Peace where Maurice Strong was a prominent CEO.

At last count, the University of Peace was destined to relocate to Toronto’s waterfront. Former Liberal MP Dennis Mills made a pre-federal election announcement with what he said was "the permission of Canada’s Prime Minister Paul Martin".

About a year after the Earth Council hightailed it from Costa Rica, Strong set up offices just down the hall from those of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, at UN Manhattan headquarters.

At that time, accountants for former Costa Rican President José Marií Figueres Olsen, were pursuing Strong.

The calendar moves ahead and now The US Attorney’s Office want to talk to Strong about oil-for-food, and he’s not in the best books of the Kekoldi Indians back in Costa Rica.

Incredibly, while Strong was organizing the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992, in the same month of the same year, Costa Rica’s Ministry of Natural Resources were filing charges against Strong and his partner in Desarollos Ecologicos S.A., Julio Garcia for building the $35 million Villas del Caribe condo hotel on land located in the Kekoldi Indian Reservation and Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge–without official permits. Strong’s son ran the luxury hotel.

But it is the carbon credits, devised for the Kyoto Accord that could be described as the biggest scam of all time that leads to the Canada Free Press lead, "We’ve been had".

The accord may have been engineered in Kyoto, Japan but it was manufactured in sunny Costa Rica.

The blueprint can be found in a May 9, 1997 Earth Council media release, First Global Environment Commodity Goes to Market.

It happened at Braulio Carillo National Park, Costa Rica and was launched by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Clinton welcomed Costa Rica’s launch of "the world’s first formal program to curb global warming through an international market in greenhouse gas emission reductions".

"President Clinton’s remarks followed an announcement by Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueros that his country would be introducing Certifiable Tradable Offsets (CTOs TM) to the international market.

"Each issued CTO TM represents the halted or reduced emission into the atmosphere of one metric ton of carbon."

Like carnival hucksters, the Earth Council and friends were selling carbon credits that were the equivalent of thin air.

Proceeds from CTO TM sales would help finance Costa Rica’s further efforts to preserve and regenerate its tropical forests, with the specific intent of offsetting emissions from cars, industry and the burning of forests.

According to the Earth Council media release, "a portion of future sales proceeds will also go towards the development of an "Earth Centre" in Costa Rica. A project of the Earth Council, the Earth Centre will be an environmental, education, science and entertainment facility envisioned as a "gateway" to Costa Rica’s national parks."

How could this possibly be when the Earth Council took flight from Costa Rica?

"The carbon certificates created by the Costa Rican government and U.S. companies provide a new way to finance these investments," President Clinton said.

President Figueros saw the carbon certificate scheme as the creation of "the first tradable commodity of global benefit".

The CTO TM program was introduced to the market through a strategic alliance between Costa Rica’s government, the U.S-based Centre Financial Products Limited and the Earth Council.

"To initiate the market today, Centre Financial made the first U.S. purchase of CTOs TM in the amount of 1,000 metre tons of carbon (equaling the average carbon emissions of 900 U.S. cars," stated the Earth Council media release.

The CTO TM creators said their credibility would be ensured by "an independent certificate process being developed with technical assistance from the World Bank."

The Costa Rican office for Joint Implementation (OCIC) was working with Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS), a world leader in inspection, testing and verification, to "certify" the offsets.

Add to this mix, the entry of a Geneva-based entity called the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), brought to the table by Strong and sponsored by the Earth Council.

The Association is touted as having become one of the first "truly independent international verifiers of company emission reports and carbon credits" and can actually issue certificates that can facilitate trading.

Already recruited by IETA are some 35 major companies, including BP, Shell, General Motors and Canada’s very own BC Hydro, previously called BC Electric before the utility’s alleged 1961 expropriation from its then-owner, Power Corporation of Montreal, and just one year before Maurice Strong entered stage left.

From 1962 to 1966, Strong served as the President of Power Corp., assisted by his young protégé, a lawyer named Paul Martin.

In the controversial Kyoto credit scheme, companies are given certificates to emit fixed amounts of specific chemical compounds when it’s never been proven that man-made global warming is a real phenomenon.

Government spy commissars would have to stand sentinel at smokestacks, similar to the one that sent white smoke from the Vatican announcing the emergence of Pope Benedict XV1. But the commissars’ job would be to monitor emissions so that offenders can be caught.

Companies have been sold a bill of goods by an entity that exited the country where the non-commodities of "credits" were devised. Today, the Earth Council of Kyoto fame is nothing more than a skeleton staff and a bunch of files in the Toronto offices of one of the world’s largest environmental companies.

Could it be that forensic researcher David Hawkins is right on the money when he says that what he calls the "Kyoto Kickback Kleptocracy" should be the number one issue in June’s expected Canadian federal election?


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Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily.

David Hawkins, Foundation Scholar-Cambridge University, and founder of the Citizen's Association of Forensic Economists at Hawks' CAFE