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Forget the freak show in Copenhagen to embarrass Canada, led by radical greens with their tiresome "Fossil" awards, shamefully promoted by grandstanding Toronto Mayor David Miller, who "accepted" one claiming he, too, was embarrassed.

Ignore the destructive attacks by Ontario and Quebec on Alberta, proving premiers Dalton McGuinty, Jean Charest and their environmental mouthpieces, are the small men of Confederation.

Ignore the freaks who cut down our flag from Canada's High Commission in London, threatening to smear it with oil, the American "Yes Men" with their juvenile antics and European warmists comparing Canada to Saudi Arabia.

They're all buffoons.
Focus instead on the real scandal as 192 world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, gather in Copenhagen for their final, self-laudatory communique on climate change, which will declare victory and propose more UN meetings to save the planet.

The real scandal is that Europol, the European law enforcement agency, has uncovered a massive fraud by large-scale, organized crime in Europe's carbon trading markets.

Rob Wainwright, director of Europol's serious crime squad, told theTelegraphit has "endangered the credibility" of carbon trading.

Police estimate over $7 billion was stolen in just 18 months and say criminals may next target Europe's electricity and gas markets.

Up to 90% of all carbon trading in some European countries -- supposedly to help lower global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions -- may have been fraudulent.

The U. K., France, Spain, Holland and Denmark were hit. Denmark, according to theGuardian, passed emergency legislation related to the fraud just as the UN climate change meeting in its capital of Copenhagen was getting underway.

Fraudsters would set up in one country, buy tax-free carbon credits from other nations and then sell them domestically, adding on the value-added tax. But instead of forwarding those taxes to the government, they would disappear with the cash and set up somewhere else.

Canadians should care because Copenhagen is really about establishing a global cap-and- trade market in carbon dioxide emissions, in which Canada would have to participate.

Carbon markets -- led by Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) -- are already worth over $100 billion annually. Carbon trading -- whose earliest corporate backers were Enron's fraudsters because they saw an easy way to make money -- could be worth $3 trillion annually within a decade, twice the value of today's oil markets.

The stock used in carbon trading, a "carbon credit", gives the bearer the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide, allegedly because someone else didn't. Its value hinges entirely on the ability of governments to "cap" greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The system is only as strong as its weakest national regulator -- meaning opportunities for fraud are huge. One way of generating credits -- the UN's Clean Development Mechanism -- is rife with allegations of profiteering and corruption.

The ETS has driven up energy costs for consumers, provided windfall profits for big business and done nothing for the environment.

Canadian investors (public and private) could now be fleeced for billions, lowering our standard of living.

And when the speculative carbon market crashes, it will make the recent global stock market meltdown and recession look like a minor correction.

Finally, we'll be paying billions of our tax dollars annually to some of the world's most corrupt regimes, in the faint hope they'll lower their GHG emissions.

That's the real scandal in Copenhagen.

lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca