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

lessons unlearned 125And probably you won’t be surprised to learn that there are still furtherpolitical difficulties with that project.Conflicts over ownershipA basic requirement of any trading system is that everybody has toagree who the owners are of the goods to be traded. For a car marketto work, for example, everybody has to agree that it is the car companythat owns the product to be sold – not auto workers, nor communitiesnear sources of raw materials, nor anyone else. In emissionsmarkets, however, not everyone agrees who owns what. Many peopleclaim that countries or firms are using pollution dump space that belongsto others.The problem was already evident in the US’s sulphur dioxide tradingsystem, which granted pollution allowances only to the biggestpollutingprivate firms. Some environmentalists argued that it waselectricity customers, not power companies, who should get the allowances,and that companies should have to buy them. ‘It’s the public’sair that’s being used as a waste dump,’ observed attorney DavidDoniger of Environmental Defence in 2002. ‘There’s a good argumentthat you ought to pay to use the dump.’ 220Even deeper and more wide-ranging difficulties about ownershipaffl ict the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.As economist Simone Bastianoni and colleagues observe, such programmesrequire an ‘accounting method to create a greenhouse gasinventory which also assigns responsibility for emissions’. 221 To put itmore briefly: emissions markets need to know who it is exactly that’swarming the globe.Sounds like an easy question.It’s not. It’s a little like trying to work out in the courts who is responsiblefor an industrial accident that takes off a worker’s finger. Is it theco-worker who wasn’t watching? The manufacturer of the machinery?The contractor who operates it? The person who invented it 50 yearsago? The owner of the company hiring the contractor? The owner ofthe factory site? The government safety board? The worker herself?Similarly, who’s responsible for the burning of fossil fuels in the petroltank of a particular car? The car owner who drives it? Exxon, whodrilled the oil? General Motors, who built the car? The politician whodefeated the mass transportation system that would have made the car’spurchase unnecessary? The government of the country within whoseborders the car is driven? Should countries be held responsible for their