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

86 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingOK, so maybe RECLAIM and other schemes may have slowed down pollutioncontrol a bit and given away a lot of assets in the atmosphere to big privatecompanies. But didn’t they work in the end?They worked in the sense that they were part of a programme that reducedpollution. But continuing and strengthening previous regulationwould have worked, too – and perhaps in a way that would havebeen less costly for society as a whole in the long term.For example, lead could have also been virtually eliminated from petrolthrough conventional performance-standard regulation. And itmight have been eliminated faster. The question is not only whetherpollution control methods work, but how, how effectively, and forwhose advantage.History repeats itselfAnd you’re suggesting that a history of problems with property rights in USpollution markets is being repeated with greenhouse gas emissions tradingschemes?Unfortunately, yes. Following in the footsteps of the US, parties tothe UNFCCC have tried to paper over the dilemma that pits environmentaleffectiveness against the market’s need for secure propertyrights. While wanting to give away rights to the global carbon sink,many signatories to the Kyoto Protocol are worried about being heldliable for the resulting damages.All along, too, the UNFCCC has had to fend off objections Southerngovernments and critical environmentalists have made to the giveawayof atmospheric assets to big polluters. One example was India’sbelated, quixotic 1999 demand for assurances that the Kyoto Protocol‘has not created any asset, goods or commodity for exchange’. 64 Someare also concerned that governments’ gifts of allowances to businessmay amount to subsidies actionable under the World Trade Organisation.65Governments know, in other words, that admitting openly thatthey’re giving billions of dollars in assets to the worst greenhouse gaspolluters could be both legal and political poison. That’s why, in the2001 Marrakech Accords, the parties to the UNFCCC were drivento stipulate that the ‘Kyoto Protocol has not created or bestowed anyright, title or entitlement to emissions of any kind on Parties includedin Annex I.’ 66But – just as in the US – the pretence is hard to maintain. OutsideUN meeting halls, nearly every institution involved in carbon