The business of carbon trading
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Posted on September 28, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Carbon trading is an idea that received a boost from the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions, backed by the Clinton administration then rejected by the US when George Bush became president. It provides a market approach to the buying and selling of carbon credits with the aim of helping countries achieve targets set in the protocol for emission reductions. Sounds strange, of course, and many environmentalists don’t like the approach.
Europe embraced it wholeheartedly and it has now become a multi-billion dollar industry in which the US has no significant role. It received some rather extensive coverage in today’s Washington Post business section, and the link is here.
For a European point of view, here’s an article from the BBC web site dated a year ago. Both articles make note of the fact that the lack of US participation undermines the whole program.
From the Post:
“The United States insisted that other countries adopt a cap-and-trade approach for greenhouse gases in the Kyoto accord but then never signed on while Europe moved ahead. Back then, the United States agreed to reach a target 7 percent below 1990 emissions by 2012. Now, the country is churning out 16 percent more than it did in 1990 and 25 percent more than either China or the E.U.”
From the BBC:
“Without the participation of the US, Mr Cameron said that efforts to slow climate change had been set back 10 years. “
This is woeful indeed — and immoral when you consider what we are dealing with.
The lack of federal action is one reason why many states are taking matters into their own hands. It is beyond interesting that as Gov. Schwarzenegger signed California’s groundbreaking legislation yesterday, putting a cap on greenhouse gas emissions in that state, they had a live feed with the Prime Minister of Great Britain, not the president of the US. The governor and Blair met earlier this year to begin working together to tackle global warming, bypassing the Bush administration, as this article notes.
For all that, carbon trading remains controversial, replacing public policy with a market approach to our global warming crisis. It is unlikely that the market will be able to reverse the heating of our atmosphere, and, even if it had that capacity, certainly not in enough time to reverse the heating trend. There are simply too many economic powers that have an interest in polluting our air, our water, our lands. Besides, the targets set by Kyoto are woefully short of what is needed to stave off disaster.
I found this great summary of the situation at this post on the Guardian Unlimited blog, Comment is Free, written by George Monbiot. What is required of us makes Kyoto look small indeed.
I would like to direct you to a much more interesting, far-reaching approach to cutting greenhouse gases, what is called ‘contraction and convergence.’ Check it out at the Global Commons Institute. Besides being a more comprehensive approach, it is also more equitable. More ecological hope here, I do believe.
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EU and many others knew that USA would never sign Kyoto, but by excluding US corporations from CO2 market rule-making, left out the companies that might otherwise participate–wanting to set terms and conditions. Eventually, USA will have to join trading bloc as corporations demand entry. Otherwise, Kyoto would have failed altogether.
Benefits of trading scheme now accumulate in the CO2 rich. CO2 allocations should be proportional to a nation’s population, which would benefit global south. Flawed and imcomplete, the carbon markets seem to work. Next, carbon taxes and individual carbon allocations. More, much more, to come.
Wayne Hayes