Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on "carbon credit" projects that are yielding few if any environmental benefits.

英国《金融时报》进行的一项调查发现，新兴的温室气体市场普遍存在失败。这表明，一些组织正在为并不存在的减排行动埋单。

An FT investigation¹ has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions² reductions that do not take place.

与此同时，另一些组织在碳交易中以非常微小的支出赚取了巨大的利润。在某些情况下，它们拿出来交换的，是它们无论如何都要进行的清理工作。

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure³ and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

环境政治的政治色彩日益增强，引发了一场"环保淘金潮"。在这一大潮中，从事碳交易的公司数量急剧增加，它们向企业和个人提供达到"碳中和(carbon neutral)"机会，让这些企业和个人通过购买碳信用来抵消它们的能源使用，抵偿它们对全球变暖造成的影响。

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a "green gold rush" which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go "carbon neutral", offsetting⁴ their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

受到监管的碳信用市场方兴未艾，预计在2010之前，规模将增长一倍多，达到682亿美元左右。而不受监管的自发市场届时也将增至40亿美元。

The burgeoning⁵ regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn (€50bn) by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector⁶ rising to $4bn in the same period.

汇丰(HSBC)环境顾问弗朗西丝o沙利文(Francis Sullivan)说，经过几个月的评估，他发现，碳交易市场存在"严重的信用问题"。汇丰是英国最大的银行，于2005年达到了碳中和。

Francis Sullivan, environment adviser⁷ at HSBC, the UK's biggest bank which went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found "serious credibility concerns" in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.

他指出："警方、反欺诈部门和交易标准制定部门都需要研究这种现象。否则，人们会对它失去信任。"鉴于这些问题，汇丰已经选择抛开市场，直接出资进行自己的削减碳排放项目。

"The police, the fraud squad⁸ and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it," he said. These concerns led the bank to ignore the market and fund its own carbon reduction projects directly.

一些企业在清理自己的污染的时候，设法让那些"追求环保的"顾客为此买单，自己从中获利。例如，化工公司杜邦(DuPont)在肯塔基州的工厂每减少1吨二氧化碳排放，就要求消费者支付4美元。这个工厂产生一种强力温室气体--三氟甲烷(HFC-23)。不过，消除这种气体所需要的设备相对来说比较便宜。杜邦拒绝对此发表评论，也没有具体说明自己从这个项目中获得了多少利润。杜邦表示，现在讨论这个问题为时尚早。

Some companies are benefiting by asking "green" consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a tonne of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent⁹ greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively¹⁰ cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify¹¹ its earnings¹² from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.