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

162 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradinghave undermined the possibility of generating CDM credits through‘avoided deforestation’, the existence of the bars was referred to onlyin a footnote. When delegates discovered that the IPCC panel hadchanged already-approved estimates regarding sequestration by factorsof up to 10 times in a way that made biotic carbon sequestrationseem more plausible, panel chair Robert T. Watson offered the excuseof a ‘simple typing mistake’. Throughout, IPCC scientists have beencareful to avoid putting themselves in a position in which they mightbe forced to assess carefully the threat various risks and uncertaintiespose to the Kyoto market’s accounting system. 362 The carbon-tradingtail was wagging the scientific dog.The wagging has continued. Recently, several European governments,desperate for cheap credits, have let slip that they plan to tryto allow carbon sink credits back into the EU ETS. In addition, carbonsink credits continue to be popular in the voluntary market. Andthere has recently also been a renewed push to include forest conservationprojects in the CDM. 363‘The Kyoto Protocolto the UN FrameworkConvention on ClimateChange may be themost important economicagreement penned in the20th century.’Aaron Cosbey,Royal Institute ofInternational Affairs,LondonBut maybe these governments and their expert advisers just don’t understandthe issues.It’s unlikely that’s the entire explanation. 364 Trading advocates such asMichael Grubb are very clear that it is ‘impossible’ to measure or definethe climatic difference between with- and without-project scenarios.It’s just that they later backtrack to the position that it’s merely‘difficult’. 365 In this same way, another expert admitted that carbonsavings ‘cannot be measured’ only later to slip into the claim that ‘accurate’or ‘inaccurate’ measurements can be made. 366Baselines that are at first admitted to be ‘inherently impossible to verify’are often then treated as merely imprecise, with error bars of, say,‘45 per cent in either direction’ that can be ‘managed’ by ‘putting inplace safeguards and taking a conservative approach’. 367 In 2003, carbonproject proponents were forced to admit that some projects thathad been CDM candidates – and rejected for being business as usual– were indeed going forward without carbon money. The responsefrom some trading proponents was that even if such projects were notbusiness as usual ‘at the time of application,’ perhaps they became solater – or that perhaps it was only initial CDM interest that enabledthem to find the finance that allowed them to proceed.Similarly, many carbon consultants at first denied the need to quantifysocially-mediated carbon effects of CDM projects, or protestedthat it was ‘not their job’ to do so. 368 Others tried to float the ideathat (for example) the indirect and long-range effects of establishing