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

lessons unlearned 127flow of fossil carbon out of the ground. It’s both more economicaland more logical to curb this flow at the relatively few points it occursthan to attempt to impose centralised control over millions ofseparate users of coal, oil and gas.Maybe so, but by the same token, isn’t it true that putting the point of responsibilitycloser to where fossil fuel fl ows out of the ground would run against theimmediate interests of infl uential oil and coal companies?For sure – unless they were handed a large number of free rights tothe world’s carbon dump.But presumably in that case, they would fi nd themselves under fi re for capturingunacceptably large rents from the customers to whom they would pass ontheir costs. 226I think you’re beginning to see why it’s not a simple question of experttechnique to decide who the owners of emissions rights are goingto be. It needs public discussion.It seems like everybody’s going to be in confl ict with everybody else.Confl ict has already broken out over rights given out by the EU ETS.In a rerun of some of the squabbles that plagued the US sulphur dioxidetrading scheme, for instance, the award of carbon credits to variousEU energy and chemical corporations merely for having obeyedWhose Carbon Dump Is It?Industrial manufacturers aren’t the onlypeople caught up in the new confl icts overownership of carbon dumping space.In New Zealand, plantation owners joinedbattle with the government in 2003 overwho owns the carbon in 200,000 hectaresof trees planted after 1989, which are eligibleunder the Kyoto Protocol to countas ‘carbon sinks’ that soak up the country’sindustrial emissions. The owners claimedthe government was trying to steal nzd2.6 billion from them with a stroke of thepen, ‘possibly the largest private propertytheft in New Zealand’s history.’ 233 Theyvowed to ‘take whatever action is necessary’to ensure just compensation for theirpurloined property. 234In the UK, meanwhile, trouble is brewingbetween firms that sell rights over thecarbon-absorbing capacity of trees to thepublic and some of the local or state organisationsthat raise the trees. The marketingfirms, it’s alleged, are manoeuvring theforest-planting organisations into signingcontracts relinquishing these rights for aperiod of 99 years for a pittance. The marketingfirms then sell these rights on to thepublic for a huge mark-up, claiming falselythat they can make consumers’ jet fl ightsor home heating ‘carbon-neutral’.