Upsetting the Offset - Transnational Institute

Introduction
continuation of an agenda of business-as-usual with two main resulting
outcomes: no progress with global climate change mitigation – some might even
talk about regress; and the solidification of unequal and unjust relations between
North and South, leading to the continued suffering of poor communities in
developing countries.
Running Out of Time: What Climate Change Scientists Tell Us
Leaving the grave consequence of ill thought out and implemented CDM
projects for communities in the South to one side for the moment, why is it so
important to make urgent progress with reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions anyway? The answer is: because this is what the overwhelming
majority of climate change scientists tell us we need to do!
In 1869 the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first to put forward
the theory that accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by human
activities would lead to warming. 29 One and a half centuries later this is not a
theory anymore. In 2007 The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the world’s prime
scientific body that deals with climate change issues, states:
18
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from
observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures,
widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level. 30
The increase in global temperatures is leading to melting of glaciers at the poles,
rise in sea water levels in turn threatening human and animal life and
biodiversity around coastal regions. It is leading to increased floods, cyclones,
heat waves, droughts, ocean acidification, change in seasonal patterns, and
changes in life cycle events like blooming and insect emergence, and the plant
and animal ranges are shifting towards the poles which eventually is affecting
the food chain and specially the species that are on top of the food chain,
including human beings. Global warming will also lead to faster spread of
diseases and species extinction as well as the loss of biodiversity.
Global warming, which leads to climatic changes of various types, many of
which are still unforeseeable, is caused by both climatic drivers (climatic
variations like Pacific Decadal Oscillation, El Nino-Southern Oscillation and
North Atlantic Oscillation) and non-climate drivers of change, such as
industrialization, urbanization, agriculture and land use as well as pollution that
influences the climate both directly as well as indirectly. 31 But according to the
IPCC, human activities (industrialization, urbanization, etc.) are primarily
responsible for global warming and climate change. The IPCC clearly states that
global GHG emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial
times, with an increase of 70% between 1970 and 2004... Global atmospheric
concentrations of CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 O have increased markedly as a result of
human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined
from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. Global increases in CO 2
concentrations are due primarily to fossil fuel use, with land-use change
providing another significant but smaller contribution. It is very likely that the