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

124 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingupwind states believed to contribute to the state’s acid rain problem.This was ruled unconstitutional by a US district court in 2002, settingoff a high-level legal battle. 217Many critics are concerned, similarly, that when fossil fuel users buyrights to continue polluting their local areas, they are buying the rightto release toxic substances in addition to carbon dioxide.All right. But the problem of ‘hot spots’ seems pretty minor if it saves big businessmoney in making short-term pollution cuts.You may think so – provided it isn’t your health or environment atstake. But remember that even in the US, airborne particles of sulphurdioxide, together with particles of NO x , cut short the lives ofan estimated 30,000 US residents each year as well as causing acidrain. 218Maybe so, but the programme might still have been ‘effi cient.’ You can’t tellfor sure until you assign an economic value to the lives lost or damaged and dothe arithmetic.The problem is that for such calculations to be possible, you couldn’tassign human lives a value so high that it would automatically outweighalmost any economic gains made elsewhere.Well, sure. Making a market is like making an omelette – you have to breaka few eggs. You can’t assign an infi nite value to unbroken eggs, otherwise youwon’t get your omelette. The eggs have to have a specifi c numerical value, andnot too high.And suppose the eggs – er, people – disagree with the statistical valuetheir lives have been assigned? Or suppose they refuse to have anysuch value attached to their lives at all? 219They’re not necessarily qualifi ed to discuss it, if they’re not economists, are they?Are you suggesting that they don’t know how to value their ownlives?Oops, that doesn’t sound very democratic, does it? Let me rephrase that tomake it sound better.I’m not sure that will do any good. The point is that the new market’sneed for these calculations to be made leads unavoidably to politicalarguments – like the one we’re having now. There’s nothing ‘neutral’about the project of making emissions reductions ‘efficient’ throughtrading schemes.