Upsetting the Offset - Transnational Institute

Cases
USA ~ 19 tons/ person/year, EU ~ 9 tons/person/year. And if you take up the
‘black carbon emitting’ poor of South Asia, the approx. 70% of the poorest
here, who are the target of this motivated ABC/BC campaign? Their average
CO2e emission is less than 0.6 tons/person/year. So why is the focus of this
twisted, ABC induced, climate crying on these people? There are hidden
agendas behind this.
In refusing to carry out any significant reduction in their forcible overconsumption
and the resultant excessive waste dumping onto the global
commons (like the oceans, the atmosphere etc) – the total GHG emissions by
the Annex I countries have increased by nearly 20% from their 1990 levels,
instead of coming down, as envisioned in the Kyoto treaty – the capitalistindustrial
societies have consistently tried to pass the burden of emission
reduction to the already under-consuming societies – across nations as well as
within nations. This has been done through market based mechanisms like
carbon emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
Now, one more potent weapon for emissions trading space has been discovered
in the shape of the ABC, and the multilateral agencies along with the Western
research institutes gleefully accepted the new found opportunity.
Here, it is necessary to clarify that overwhelmingly large part of the solid
fuels that South Asia’s (and other similar society’s) poor are forced to use for
cooking, are not fossil fuels, as they are part of the ‘active carbon cycle’ of the
earth and thus do not add to the net GHG emissions. This holds true to the
extent that the wood or other biomass used by these poor families do not
exceed the regeneration of these biomass resources within comparable time
periods. The black carbon aerosols emitted by these fuels would surely
contribute to the ABC and its climate impacts, but in a less significant way than
assumed by Ramanathan’s and others studies, as I will explain/argue in a later
part of this chapter.
The apparently ‘clean’ electricity used for cooking by the majority of families
in the Global North, and by the upper classes in the Global South as well – is
not so clean after all, as most of this electricity comes from either the dirtiest
GHG emitter – coal (about 70% in India and Australia, 80% in China, over
50% in USA), or equally damaging dam based hydro-electricity (which also
causes large emissions of the potent GHG methane by submerging huge forest
biomasses, along with adding net CO2 emission by destroying this large forest
carbon sink), or the dangerously polluting nuclear fission energy (which, apart
from the millennia long radioactive contamination threat, also has a large carbon
footprint – contrary to common perception – from their large embedded energy
of construction, maintenance and decommissioning).
What are the Projected Facts About Atmospheric Brown Cloud?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as well known
climate scientists, such as Hansen, Jacobson and Ramanathan’s UNEP study –
all have tried to quantify the amount of global warming potential – called
radiative forcing – of this Atmospheric Brown Cloud. There are wide variations
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