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

Chapter 5Ways forwardIn which the claim that ‘there is no alternative’ to carbon trading is dissectedand set aside, and emerging alliances for a more democratic and eff ectiveclimate politics are explored.This special report has argued that the carbon market is getting in theway of solutions to the climate crisis.Yet many environmentalists – especially in the North – say that carbontrading is unavoidable. Citing the Kyoto Protocol, the EU ETSand other trading schemes, they argue that, like it or not, it’s impossibleto imagine any future national or international climate regimethat does not include carbon markets. ‘The only policy measures withteeth involve cap and trade’, goes one often-heard refrain. ‘And theonly way of overcoming US opposition to climate action is throughcarbon trading; to criticise carbon markets is to play into the hands ofGeorge W. Bush and the oil companies.’There’s no time to start all over again, many environmentalists add,so the best we can do is roll up our sleeves and pitch in to try to makecarbon trading a little less unworkable, a little less counterproductiveand a little less unfair than it would be otherwise.I can see you think this is the counsel of despair. But what’s the alternative?That’s a question that’s often asked – again, especially in the North.Let’s start by trying to appreciate what a very strange question it is.Pollution trading is a completely new idea, recently pushed on theworld by a small circle of neoliberal institutions in the US. (Thequarrel between George W. Bush and carbon trading advocates suchas the framers of the Kyoto Protocol is in part merely a friendly disputebetween two overlapping factions of US business.) Pollutiontrading’s main appeal is that it promises to save money for the richover the short term. As a pollution control policy, it has a bad to indifferentrecord in the very few places it’s been tried, and is sure to failelsewhere if the pollutant involved is that slippery, ubiquitous compoundcalled carbon dioxide.By contrast, many so-called ‘alternative’ approaches are of extremelylong standing, have a range of beneficial effects, and have a prior