carbon offset

Carbon offsets are meant to reward companies for cutting their emission of greenhouse gases. But environmentalists claim that some companies are producing extra emissions in order to get paid for destroying it. A U.N. board has halted credits for the projects in question while it investigates.

As the world's leaders converge for the global climate summit, the clouds over what had been deemed a fairly useless exercise in geopolitical stagecraft appear to be lifting. Most dramatic is a proposal that rich nations provide a $100 billion per year to help poorer nations cope with emission cuts.