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

54 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingEarly history of the market fixThe market fix for global warming could not have become so dominantif it came out of nowhere. Part of its success is owed to the factthat it is part of a larger, more longstanding historical wave of neoliberalism.Internationally, neoliberalism is a movement using institutions suchas the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation, along withvarious treaties, to establish new forms of globally-centralised controlover far-flung resources. Attempting to integrate trading systemsworldwide, neoliberalism reorganises property rights systemsand fights regulation in an attempt to reduce the power of nationalgovernments, labour unions and local communities over corporateactivity.Justifying neoliberalism is an ideology of ‘efficiency’ developed overdecades, largely in the think-tanks, academic economics departments,international agencies and government ministries of Anglo-America.The ideology revolves around the claim that society as a whole willbenefit if it ‘makes the most’ out of whatever stuff is available to it.That seems reasonable.Sure – as long as everybody agrees on what it means to ‘make themost’ out of the stuff you have.How do you tell when you’ve made the most out of what you have?On a neoliberal view, you first divide all your stuff into a lot of differentbits. This isn’t always so easy. The categories the bits are dividedinto don’t always reflect the categories people use to live their lives.For example, you might be forced to divide your land into ‘permanentforests’ and ‘permanent fields’ even if you’re a member of anindigenous group that doesn’t demarcate land this way and insteaduses some areas as woodland during some periods and as fields duringothers.Or you might be forced to divide your activities into ‘labour’, ‘housework’and ‘leisure’, even though you’re not used to looking at thingsthat way either. 87 Or you might have to divide your state welfare institutionsinto pieces that can be more easily managed for profit.It’s a bit like taking a picture and sawing it into a jigsaw puzzle. Youwind up with a lot of odd-shaped pieces with a bit of blue sky andcloud here and half an eye or a piece of a house over there.