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

lessons unlearned 119Does Emissions Trading Reward Effi cient Actors?Emissions trading can help big polluterssave short-term emissions-reduction costs.But does it reward companies and countriesthat are already more efficient, evenby conventional standards? Not so far.Under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme,global public assets which presumablyshould be used to foster the fastest transitionto a non-fossil energy regime worldwideare being handed to the biggest carbonemitters in the most carbon-intensivecountries.So far, these big polluters have respondedto the scheme mainly by lobbying formore emissions permits or more advantageousways of distributing them withintheir sectors; by massaging baseline figures;by seeking carbon credits from abroad thatwill help them evade structural change; bylooking more closely at gas; and by passingon any costs to customers.The Kyoto Protocol, meanwhile, awardsthe most emissions rights per capita tocountries that are, even by very conventionaleconomic yardsticks, relatively inefficientusers of energy.Australia, for example, is one of the most‘carbon-inefficient’ countries in the world.It ranks 109th among 141 nations in its carbonefficiency, or ratio of tonnes of carbondioxide emitted per US dollar of GDP. Yetunder the Kyoto Protocol, Australia, hadit signed the treaty, would have been generouslygranted emissions rights amountingto around 27 tonnes per capita. Othernotably carbon-inefficient countries(the Czech Republic, ranked 115th; theUS, ranked 100th; Canada, ranked 98th;Finland, ranked 80th; The Netherlands,ranked 78th; Germany, ranked 76th; theUK, ranked 74th) get rights to betweenapproximately 10–17 tonnes of carbon dioxideequivalent per capita.At the same time, the world’s most carbonefficientcountries (including Namibia, theLao PDR, Nepal and Bangladesh, ranked1st, 5th, 18th and 23rd respectively) receivezero tradable rights under the Protocol.Sweden, a moderately carbon-efficientnation (ranked 42nd out of 141), gets onlyabout seven tonnes per capita, around thesame as Japan and Spain, ranked 61st and62nd (see Table 3, next page). 207when governments such as that of the US are finally panicked into takingaction on global warming, they will grasp at extreme, technicalfixsolutions such as creating new life forms to produce hydrogen, reengineerhurricane-prone seas, or absorb carbon dioxide; seeding theoceans with nanoparticles to promote plant growth; dispersing nanoparticlesin the upper atmosphere to reflect light; or putting continentsizedmirrors into space (see Chapter 2). 202Third, far from being a quick ‘stopgap solution’ that can be appliedimmediately while more difficult measures are prepared, emissionstrading is the ‘most difficult of the economic instruments’ 203 availablefor environmental protection, and requires an enormous amountof legal, institutional and technological stage-setting to get off theground, even in a country like the US.