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

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 221‘Oil, the blood of theearth, has become, in timeof war, the blood of victory.’Henry Berenger,adviser to French PrimeMinister Clemenceau, 1918Oil is the blood of theearth, and should not betaken away. We cannot dothat.’Berito Kubaruwa, U’wa,Colombian Amazon, 1998‘No blood for oil.’Antiwar slogan,1990, 2002and labour abuse are now, increasingly, local confl icts over ‘carbonoffsets’ – the projects that license and excuse the extraction, the pollutionand the abuse.At first glance, these new confl icts may seem to be only indirectlyconnected to fossil fuels. People fighting industrial tree plantationsin Brazil, for example, may never catch a whiff of the hydrocarbonswhose release in Scotland the plantations are supposed to justify andexcuse. But the struggle of the exploited community in Brazil and thepolluted community in Scotland are, in a sense, one. In discoveringthe other’s struggle, each, in a sense, rediscovers its own. The KyotoProtocol and other carbon market schemes springing up around theworld, in globalising the defence of fossil fuels in a new way, are alsoglobalising confl icts and movements over fossil fuels in a new way.In the past, the deeper meanings of dependence on fossil fuel could beunderstood by coming to grips with the experience of oil wars, pollutedfarmland, lung disease, militarisation, strip mines, disappearingforests and degraded ice caps. But this is no longer enough. Today,anyone who wants to understand what fossil fuel dependencemeans also has to look closely at the ‘carbon offset’ and ‘carbon saving’projects now being set up around the globe, under the auspicesof the Kyoto Protocol’s ‘flexible mechanisms’, the World Bank andinnumerable consultancies and other private firms; to ask questionsabout them; and to listen to the voices of those who are affected.Looking at tensions and confl icts in Guatemala, Ecuador, Uganda,Costa Rica, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, South Africa and Brazil, thischapter brings together a few of these questions and voices. It attemptsto introduce these struggles in the only way they can be introduced:through studying what actually happens on the ground.The topic is difficult. As the last chapter has tried to indicate, themarket in credits generated by ‘carbon-saving’ involves some of themost arcane and convoluted technical, legal and intellectual exercisesever devised in the service of perpetuating inequality and environmentalfolly.But as elsewhere in this special report, a question-and-answer formatmay help bring the issues surrounding the new carbon marketcloser to open public debate. And as with previous chapters, it’s hopedthat questions will continue to be raised even after the last page isturned.