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

140 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingIsn’t that a confl ict of interest?Yes. But no one’s making a fuss. When challenged, UN officials saythat the expert qualifications of these consultants, together with theprocess of peer review, exempt them from charges of confl ict of interest.But what about the public? Why can’t the public have a say over what businessas usual should be considered to be?The public doesn’t play much of a part in these discussions – if theyare informed what’s going on at all.How do these consultants go about their business?They identify the ‘baseline’, or business-as-usual scenario. Then theyverify that the existence of the carbon projects is due to the financegenerated by the carbon credits they sell. Then they subtract thegreenhouse gas emitted under the project scenario from greenhousegas emitted under the baseline scenario to come up with the emissions‘saved’ by the project (see box, p. 61). In claiming that variousnon-carbon or low-carbon futures are not possible, they are, in asense, appropriating these futures for their own use.Let me get this straight. Under this kind of trading, the carbon accounts of, say,Nigeria, show a debit for carbon dioxide released by the gas fl aring that theWestern oil industry conducts within its borders. At the same time, that sameindustry (or an industrialised country sponsoring the technology that capturesthe gas and puts it to good use), can get carbon credits for whatever the ‘climatic’diff erence is between using that technology and releasing unburned methane.That’s correct. Nigeria gets stuck with the responsibility for the emissionsof a foreign oil company. Foreigners get the credits for some marginal,and probably profitable, efforts to clean up around the margins– efforts that are mandated by Nigerian law anyway. 265 It’s a neat wayfor polluters to earn, while making poorer countries pay. It does noverifiable good for the climate, as we’ll see in a moment. And it’s allconcealed under beautifully complicated accounting mathematics.Today, dam companies, forestry firms, oil companies and the like areall seeking licenses to sell carbon dumping rights on the ground thattheir projects result in the emission of less carbon than business-asusual‘alternatives’ identified by experts.So in theory, these carbon-‘saving’ projects could license the removal and burningof all the remaining fossil fuel still underground.Yes.