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

lessons unlearned 123only make it worse. They fear that the scientific fact that air pollutiondumps do not respect political borders is being recruited in theservice of economic and physical exploitation. This is the problem of‘hot spots’.Are you saying this actually happened with US sulphur dioxide trading?That’s a matter of some controversy. Many factors are involved. Somefactors in some emissions markets may actually militate against hotspots. For example, it’s often easier to generate cheap credits fromthe worst-polluting plants, meaning that those living around themmay see more improvements than others. 213 Some researchers say thatcommunities of colour have actually disproportionately benefitedfrom sulphur dioxide trading – except in the US South – althoughthe same researchers add that poor communities have lost out to asmall degree.In geographical terms, though, the effects have clearly been uneven.While sulphur dioxide levels fell in the aggregate during the 1990s,they barely changed in the swath from Columbus, Ohio, to northernWest Virginia. Hot spots have persisted east of Erie, Pennsylvania andnear Kingston and Oswego, New York and Oak Ridge, Tennessee,according to the National Atmospheric Deposition Program. Since1995, according to a study by the United States Public Interest ResearchGroup, 300 of the 500 dirtiest plants actually increased sulphurdioxide emissions. 214 The government’s Environmental ProtectionAgency found that emissions increased in Texas and Alabama, witheffects felt in Florida. 215 In the 1990s, some locations, a large majorityof which were poor and predominantly communities of colour,reported increased emissions of sulphur dioxide and resultant toxicco-pollutants such as particulate matter and volatile organic compounds.216 This prompted the National Environmental Justice AdvisoryCouncil, a government appointed body, to oppose any expansionof pollution trading schemes in the US and called on the USgovernment to address the environmental justice impacts of emissionstrading. Government officials point out that many other hot spotshave been ‘cooled’ – as they probably would have been under any reductionscheme – but admit that there have been exceptions.Proportionally, populated areas have benefited less, because buyersof credits are concentrated in more populated areas. New York state,which is downwind of many power producers, believes that it is disadvantagedby sulphur dioxide trading on a national scale, and haspushed for a regional plan to overcome the dangers of ‘averaging’over a large geographical area. In 2000, New York attached a financialpenalty to the sale of New York sulphur dioxide credits to 14