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

208 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon trading207 These figures are taken from the US’s CarbonDioxide Information Centre.208 Personal communication.209 Polanyi, op. cit. supra note 15.210 ‘Robbed of the protective covering of culturalinstitutions, human beings would perish from theeffects of social exposure; they would die as thevictims of acute social dislocation ... Nature wouldbe reduced to its elements, neighbourhoods andlandscapes defiled, rivers polluted, ... the powerto produce food and raw materials destroyed.... Aself-adjusting market ... could not exist for any lengthof time without annihilating the human and naturalsubstance of society; it would have physicallydestroyed man and transformed his surroundingsinto a wilderness’ (Polanyi, op. cit., p. 3).211 The grandfather of emissions trading, Ronald Coase,himself pointed this out: ‘The rights of a landownerare not unlimited. It is not even always possiblefor him to remove the land to another place, forinstance, by quarrying it. And although it may bepossible for him to exclude some people fromusing ‘his’ land, this may not be true of others. Forexample, some people may have the right to crossthe land. Furthermore, it may or may not be possibleto erect certain types of building or to grow certaincrops or to use particular drainage systems on theland. This does not come about simply because ofgovernmental regulation. It would be equally trueunder the common law. In fact, it would be trueunder any system of law. A system in which therights of individuals were unlimited would be one inwhich there were no rights to acquire’ (Coase, TheFirm, the Market and the Law, University of ChicagoPress, Chicago, 1988, p. 155).212 Daniel Altman, ‘Just How Far Can Trading ofEmissions Be Extended?’, New York Times, 31 May2002.213 Torres, op. cit. supra note 5, p. 227. In addition,under conventional regulation, richer communitiespay a smaller proportion of their wealth for overallpollution cuts than poorer ones do.214 Altman, op. cit. supra note 212.215 Moore, op. cit. supra note 61.216 Haywood Turrentine, Chair, National EnvironmentalJustice Advisory Committee, Letter to CarolBrowner, Administrator, U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency, 11 March 1998.217 David Biello, ‘Emissions Trading under Attack’,Environmental Finance, May 2002.218 Ibid.219 Larry Lohmann, ‘Whose Voice is Speaking? HowCost-Benefit Analysis Synthesizes New “Publics”’,Corner House Briefing Paper No. 7, 1998, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk.220 Altman, op. cit. supra note 212. Lifting regulation ofutilities’ profit margins makes the transfer of wealthto corporations in the form of emissions allowancesstill more blatant.221 Simone Bastianoni et al., ‘The Problem of AssigningResponsibility for Greenhouse Gas Emissions’,Ecological Economics 49, 3, 2004, pp. 253–57, p. 254.222 See, e.g., Michael J. G. Den Elzen et al.,‘Differentiating Future Commitments on the Basisof Countries’ Relative Historical Responsibilityfor Climate Change: Uncertainties in the“Brazilian Proposal” in the Context of a PolicyImplementation’, Climatic Change 71, pp. 277–301,2005.223 Larry Lohmann, ‘Democracy or Carbocracy?Intellectual Corruption and the Future of theClimate Debate’, Corner House Briefing Paper No.24, 2001, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/.224 Keeler, op. cit. supra note 136.225 FEASTA and New Economics Foundation, op. cit.supra note 97, p. 3; John FitzGerald, ‘An ExpensiveWay to Combat Global Warming: Reform Neededin the EU Emissions Trading Regime’, ESRIQuarterly Economic Commentary, April 2004; UBSInvestment Research, ‘European Emissions TradingScheme’, London, 2004, www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/materiality1/emissions_trading_eu_ubs_2004.pdf.226 Peterson, op. cit. supra note 116; Lisa Jacobsonand Allison Schumacher, ‘Emissions Trading: Issuesand Options for Domestic and InternationalMarkets’, Business Council for Sustainable Energy,Washington, 2000.227 Point Carbon, 16 November 2004.228 IPA Energy, op. cit. supra note 82.229 Point Carbon, 16 November 2004.230 ENDS Report 369, October 2005, p. 47.231 Ibid.232 ‘HSBC: Testing the Waters for Carbon Neutrality’,ENDS Report 369, October 2005, p. 25.233 National Business Review (New Zealand), 30December 2003.234 Ibid.235 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: The Historyof the Geo-Body of a Nation, University of HawaiiPress, Honolulu, 1994.236 Michael Grubb et al., The Kyoto Protocol: A Guideand Assessment, Royal Institute for InternationalAffairs, London, 1999, p. 98.