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

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136 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingsocial and environmental control with pedigrees far older than thatof emissions trading. 255In short, tackling global warming ‘from within our current economicsystem’ – whatever meaning is attached to that phrase – does notentail emissions trading. Business itself often points out that climatechange can’t be addressed without the sort of long-term targets anddirection that can only be provided by forces commonly seen as ‘outsidethe market’. No self-respecting big capitalists are likely to imaginethat their survival depends on emissions trading.Second, emissions trading, as what Ruth Greenspan Bell calls the‘most difficult of the economic instruments’, is hardly going to be agood choice for anyone who wants speedy and effective action acrossthe globe. In the classroom, where all the stage-setting and messy politicaland technical work it requires can be sidelined or ignored, it appeareda neat theory. 256 But in the real world, it cannot eliminate theneed for hard decisions and hard political organising. Indeed, it makesthe decisions and the organising even harder. As trading expert DavidDriesen writes, ‘Emissions trading, rather than providing an antidoteto the problems of complex decision-making that plague traditionalregulation, provides a layer of additional complications and occasionsfor dispute.’ 257 It is emissions trading itself that is turning out to requirethe impossible task of ‘solving the world’s problems.’The evidence suggests, then, that it’s carbon trading advocates, nottrading critics, who are allowing the tail of their political wishes towag the dog of what is practically possible.
lessons unlearned 137The special problems ofcarbon projectsSo far this chapter has explained why current large-scale attempts atsetting up a market in allowances to emit greenhouse gases don’t constitutean effective approach to climate change.But – as explained in the last chapter – trading in allowances to emitisn’t the only kind of carbon trading. Commerce in credits generatedby special pollution-saving projects is also growing fast.Remind me. What are these projects? How do they work?From the beginning, private firms, Northern governments and theUnited Nations have been fretting that big fossil fuel users in richcountries won’t be able to afford even the small cuts in fossil fuel userequired by emissions trading programmes such as that of the KyotoProtocol. As a result, they’ve hunted around for ways of allowing industryto continue to burn fossil fuels while still keeping their emissionsunder mandated ‘caps’.The main solution private industry and governments have turned toconsists of special carbon-saving or carbon-sequestering projects –schemes that capture greenhouse gases, put them out of harm’s way,use fossil fuels more efficiently, and so on. Instead of cutting off flowsof waste into the overflowing world carbon dump, they’ve proposedbuilding ‘extensions’ of the dump to handle the overflow. Acquiringcertificates of ‘ownership’ of such ‘dump extensions’ entitles big pollutersto emit more greenhouse gases than they have emissions allowancesfor.It’s a classic ‘end of pipe’ solution to pollution. Instead of cutting flowsof a raw material into an industrial process, you fi x the problem afterthe resulting waste is already coming out of the pipe.How do these new projects fi t into the world of trade?The allowances and the special credits created by carbon-savingprojects are all thrown into a big pot and traded one for the other.Everybody is supposed to benefit. Polluters save money by not havingto stop polluting, and builders of new carbon dump make money byselling the new dump space they create.What kind of carbon dump extensions are we talking about?
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PRESS RELEASEContact:Linda Chiavaro
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ContentsEditorial note 2Chapter 1 I
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editorial note 3in Dorset, UK - poi
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6 development dialogue september 20
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Chapter 2‘Made in the USA’A sho
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‘made in the usa’ - a short his
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Chapter 5Ways forwardIn which the c
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ways forward 331‘Tinkering around
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ways forward 333suggests that the
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ways forward 335more stringent than
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ways forward 337Unlike carbon tradi
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ways forward 339hold little appeal
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ways forward 341Waiting their Chanc
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ways forward 343ways - many of whic
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ways forward 345energy - loan benef
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ways forward 347From an Open Letter
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ways forward 349be answered in the
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ways forward 351rogated by Indian v
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ways forward 353argue, they’ve he
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ways forward 355‘The US alone acc
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appendix - the durban declaration o
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appendix - the durban declaration o
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