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

lessons unlearned 81‘The creation of formallegal title and propertyregistration becomes amachinery for transferringproperty from small ownersand concentrating it intolarger and larger hands.’ 39Timothy Mitchell, 2002take place in an ordered fashion and with a high degree of certainty’is the ‘key role of the policy system’ in an emissions trading scheme. 33Nobody who holds emissions allowances, or is thinking of buying orselling them – whether polluter, broker, banker or investor – is goingto want anybody to be able to take them away arbitrarily.So just as corporations lobby for exemption from pollution regulations,they lobby to make sure emissions allowances amount to secureproperty rights and to get as many as they can. As ‘semi-permanentproperty rights,’ in the words of David Victor of the US Council onForeign Relations, emissions permits are ‘assets that, like other propertyrights, owners will fight to protect’. 34Luckily for corporations, their privileged access to legislators enablesthem to secure carbon dump commodity for themselves merely bylobbying and pressure politics. Just as systems of private property inland give new moneymaking powers to surveyors, officials and firmswith access to titling and licensing mechanisms, the property systemsof pollution trading schemes give new commercial powers to thosewith access to legislators.As economists Peter Cramton and Suzi Kerr point out, the ‘enormousrents’ at stake ‘mean that interest groups will continue to seek changesin the allocation over time’:Firms may end up putting as much effort into rent capture as intofinding efficient ways to reduce carbon usage. Investments may bedelayed in the hope that high observed marginal costs would leadto more generous allowance allocations as compensation. The increasedcomplexity of the programme… may lead some groups toseek exemptions or bonus allowances… [I]nterest groups will fightbitterly for a share of annual rents. This fight will lead to direct costsduring the design of the policy. Groups will invest in lawyers, governmentlobbying, and public relations campaigns. Government officialswill spend enormous amounts of time preparing and analysingoptions and in negotiations. This will lead to high administrativecosts and probably considerable delays in implementation. 38Governments eager to placate industry are almost sure to give out toomany emissions rights. This in turn will make future cuts even moredifficult, while increasing pressures to reduce emissions in sectors thathave not been awarded rights (for example, domestic households, thetransport sector and the state).But hang on a minute. Regulators can be infl uenced into handing out resourcesto big companies even without environmental trading schemes. You can’t pinthat problem on emissions markets.