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

lessons unlearned 197it would have been possible for the plans to have been changed.’ 458Even the brief debate on the system in the European Parliament on10 October 2002 was unreported in any major British broadsheet orfinancial newspaper. Nor did many Members of the European Parliamentunderstand the ramifications of the scheme, since the officialsummary they had been given did not discuss who owned the rightsthat the permits represented, but only which industrial sectors wouldbe covered, how many allowances should be given out free, and soforth. The last thing that is needed is more such suppression of debate.459But are conventional regulation or taxes any more transparent to public scrutinyor conducive to public discussion?In many ways, they are. As law professor and emissions trading expertDavid Driesen remarks,With a little work, citizens can understand whether an EnvironmentalProtection Agency or state regulation will force a factoryin their neighbourhood to meet emission limitations, includingtechnology-based limitations, that similar factories meet elsewhere,or that can be met with known technology. Understandingthe myriad potential games that can be accomplished throughemissions trading requires expertise that very few possess.The fact that emissions trading, unlike more conventional forms ofregulation, allows each factory to ‘emit at a different level from itspeers’, makes public scrutiny and comparison even harder. Keepingtrack of trades in the ‘invisible, intangible commodity’ that consistsof ‘the right to emit a given amount of CO 2 ’ is going to be difficultfor ordinary people even in a country like the US. Imagine the problemsfor nations with different understandings of property rights andproperty law, whether in Europe or the South. 460Maybe what you say is true. But isn’t too much public discussion sometimesdangerous, too? For example, by exposing problems with carbon trading, you’reexposing problems with the Kyoto Protocol. And isn’t that, again, just playinginto the hands of George W. Bush and other obstructionists?No. It’s precisely to insist on the respect for evidence that Bush lacks,by seeking answers to global warming that work while trying to avoidthose that don’t. The ‘trading fix’ for global warming currently promotedby many governments and mainstream NGOs, in fact, is similarin many ways to the ‘technological fix’ that Bush is seeking. Both fixesfail because they pretend to be able to avoid the unavoidable: politics.