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

118 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingTo sum up the story so far, while trading schemes can in theory• save participating private fi rms money in• reducing emissions of specifi c substances• to a particular degree• over particular time periods and• within a particular larger technological system,the same schemes are unlikely to be the best choice if the objective is to• save money for society or industry as a whole, or• attain a more general environmental improvement, or• make more drastic reductions• with long-term goals in mind, or• bring about a change in a larger technological system.When trading advocates assert that trading systems are ‘cost-effective’without specifying for whom, in what, and over what time period,they’re being so vague that they court irrelevance. 201But maybe in helping private fi rms save money on incremental improvements incarbon-intensive technology, emissions trading can help buy time for the researchand development that is needed to shift industrialised societies away from dependenceon fossil fuels entirely. Maybe the market can help make the world’s fossilfuel technologies state-of-the-art, or moderate their climatic eff ects, while solar andother renewable technologies are being developed to replace them.There are several problems with this argument. First, shifts in technologicaland industrial structure don’t just happen on their own.Solar energy technology, for example, is not ‘advancing’ busily byitself in a bubble independent of politics, funding and society. Its developersstruggle continually to develop a network of research andinvestment against a structure of large competing subsidies and otherencouragement still being given to fossil or nuclear energy and otherarguably ‘sunset’ technologies. A shift in this pattern of support won’tbe delivered by emissions trading.Second, emissions trading schemes, even the better-designed ones,rather than buying time for governments or corporations to makestructural changes, actually slow or block many technological developmentsby squandering ingenuity and resources on making small refinementsthat extend the life of an overwhelmingly fossil-oriented energyand transport structure. And in doing so, they make it more likely that‘Greenhouse gas emissionsfrom aircraft, increasinglyimplicated in climatechange, will continue togrow even if the airlinesjoin Europe’s emissionstrading scheme, whichis designed to cut them,British Airways’ chiefeconomist admittedyesterday.’ 204News item, LondonIndependent, 2006