A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

lessons unlearned 103oranges into a single new fruit. In the case of carbon dumps, this becomespossible only by misreading the radical uncertainties, scalesand irreversibilities connected with the climate system and confusingsurvival with economic benefit (see Chapter 1). As a result, it’sgoing to be harder to make sense of using greenhouse gas emissionstrading to create ‘efficiencies’ in abating climate change, even underideal conditions, than it was to make sense of using sulphur dioxidetrading to create ‘efficiencies’ in attaining a given numerical emissionstarget.Emissions trading becomes ‘efficient’ in addition, only by commensuratingemissions at one place or time with emissions at anotherplace or time, shifting emissions cuts around over a wide area and extendedtime period so that they can be made wherever and wheneverthey are cheapest. It makes one place equivalent to another place andone time equivalent to another time.So? What’s the problem? That’s a virtue, isn’t it? The earth’s carbon dumpstraddles all political and geographical borders. The atmosphere is constantlymixing on a global scale. Whether you cut emissions in Tomsk or Toledo, theatmospheric results are the same. Assuming we can perform the measurements,emissions trading is one way of recognising this reality. The climate doesn’t carewhere we make our cuts, as long as we make them.No, actually, that’s wrong. It does matter to the climate where cutsare made.What are you talking about? A one-tonne CO 2 cut in Tomsk has the sameclimatic eff ect as a one-tonne CO 2 cut in Toledo. A tonne is a tonne is a tonne.That’s just basic science, isn’t it?Of course. But widen your vision a bit. Doing what is necessary to cutone tonne in Tomsk tomorrow may result in different future emissionsthan doing what is necessary to cut one tonne in Toledo tomorrow.The cut made in Tomsk may be the result of a radical new renewableenergy technology or way of organising social life that will lead tovastly multiplied future cuts, whereas the equal cut made in Toledomay be a routine efficiency improvement that should have been madelong ago and leads to nothing else. Where – and when – cuts aremade is likely to have knock-on effects. How cuts are made now willhave an influence on how much can be cut in the future.Precisely because it treats all one-tonne cuts as the same no matterwhere and how they occur, and results in the cheapest cuts beingmade first, emissions trading runs the risk of delaying progressin dealing with global warming. Instead of encouraging the type of