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

210 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon trading257 Driesen, op. cit. supra note 93, p. 94.258 Robert H. Socolow, ‘Can We Bury Global Warming?’,Scientific American, July 2005, pp. 45–55; Bert Metzet al., eds., Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage:Summary for Policymakers and Technical Summary,Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2005.For problems with this geosequestration ‘solution’,see, e.g., ‘Carbon Dioxide’s Great UndergroundEscape in Doubt’, New Scientist 2560, 18 July 2006,p. 19; ‘Plan to Bury CO 2 under North Sea’, theGuardian, 5 September 2003 and German AdvisoryCouncil on Global Change, The Future Oceans:Warming Up, Rising High, Turning Sour, Summaryfor Policy Makers, Berlin, 2006, which notes that‘storing CO2 in geological formations under thesea floor can only be an “emergency” solution for atransitional period’ (p. 5).259 Metz, op. cit., pp. 34–36. The German AdvisoryCouncil on Global Change, op. cit., concludes flatlythat ‘introducing CO2 into seawater should beprohibited, because the risk of ecological damagecannot be assessed and the retention period in theoceans is too short’ (p. 5).260 Freeman J. Dyson, ‘Can We Control Carbon Dioxidein the Atmosphere?’, Energy, 2, 1977, pp. 287–291.261 Climate Neutral Network, Business and theEnvironment, XI, 5, May 2000, http://www.climateneutral.com/pages/press_bus_env.html.262 Deepak Mawandia, ‘Leveraging CDM to MobilizeDisaster Relief Funding: It Could Make GoodBusiness Sense’, Kolkata, 2005.263 ‘Chile’s Agrosuper Sells Credits from Pig Waste toUtilities’, Bloomberg News, 20 September 2004.264 Lohmann, op. cit. supra note 223.265 ‘No Carbon Credit for the West African GasPipeline’, http://www.eraction.org/modules.php?name=ERA_News&file=article&sid=33; ‘GroupsSlam Nigeria’s Submission of Gas Flare Reductionsfor Carbon Credits’, http://www.carbontradewatch.org/news/nigeria.html; ‘Judge Orders Shell NigeriaMD and Petroleum Minister to Appear in Court’,http://www.climatelaw.org/media/Nigeria.shell.april06.266 Warwick J. McKibben and Peter J. Wilcoxen, ‘TheRole of Economics in Climate Change Policy’,Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, 2, 2002, pp.107–29, p. 126.267 Hasselknippe and Reine, op. cit. supra note 150, p. 22.268 Veronica Vidal, La Aplicacion de Politicas sobreCambio Climatico en el Sector Forestal del Ecuador,Memoria de Investigación Doctorado en GestiónAmbiental y Economía Ecológica, AutonomousUniversity of Barcelona, October 1999.269 IPA Energy, op. cit. supra note 82, p. 3.270 Grubb, op. cit. supra note 236, p. 138. World Bankofficials, accounting firms, financial analysts andmany businesses have all admitted, publicly orprivately, that no ways exist to demonstrate thatcarbon finance is what made a project possible. Inthe words of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, ‘financialadditionality cannot really be checked by a validator’.Holcim Cement believes that the ‘incentive providedby carbon credits, especially at their current price. . . cannot possibly prove decisive in investmentdecisions’. A New South Wales governmentspokesman attempting to defend a state greenhousegas trading scheme accused of providing coalburningpower plants with huge windfalls recentlyflatly admitted that ‘it is not possible to distinguishbetween production or investment decisions madeas a result of the scheme and those that would havebeen made anyway’ ( Wendy Frew, ‘Dirty PowerPlants Making Millions out of Green Scheme’, SydneyMorning Herald, 14 September 2005). Other tradingexperts as well have confessed that counterfactualwithout-project scenarios ‘cannot be measured’(Carolyn Fischer, ‘Project-Based Mechanisms forEmissions Reductions: Balancing Trade-Offs withBaselines’ Energy Policy 33, 2005, p. 1807). Therecan be no single ‘right’ account of ‘what wouldhave happened without a project’ (Erik Haites andFarhana Yamin, ‘The Clean Development Mechanism:Proposals for Its Operation and Governance’, GlobalEnvironmental Change 10, 2000, pp. 27–43).271 To assume otherwise is, in the words of one analyst,to reduce ‘social conditionalities…that do not easilylend themselves to prediction…(inter alia, socioeconomicdevelopment, demographic trends, futureland use practices, international policy making)…totechnical and methodological uncertainties’ or mereimprecision or data gaps. Eva Lovbrand, ‘BridgingPolitical Expectations and Scientific Limitationsin Climate Risk Management – On the UncertainEffects of International Carbon Sink Policies’,Climatic Change 67, 2–3, 2004, p. 451.272 O. P. R. Van Vliet et al., ‘Forestry Projects under theClean Development Mechanism’, Climatic Change61, 2003, p. 154.273 P. M. Fearnside, ‘Forests and Global WarmingMitigation in Brazil: Opportunities in the BrazilianForest Sector for Responses to Global Warmingunder the “Clean Development Mechanism”’,Biomass and Bioenergy 16, 1999, pp. 171–189.274 Michael Lazarus, ‘The CDM QuantificationChallenge: Time for a More Standardised Approach’,presentation at World Resources Institute/ WorldBusiness Council on Sustainable Development sideevent at the Ninth Conference of the Parties to theUNFCCC, Milan, 10 December 2003.