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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2008 - January 2009
Carbon trading: No!
The latest UN conference on Climate Change opened in Poznan, Poland, on Dec. 1 with low expectations for results, as most countries wait out still-President Bush. A coalition of 49 "Least Developed Countries," however, insisted on a target of keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide to no more than 350 parts per million, a scientifically justified goal, and yet much more ambitious than what the industrialized countries are saying.
Still, the whole UN process is fatally flawed by resting on "carbon trading"--a market for carbon emission permits. Opposition is building. This year, 50 groups issued a "Declaration Against the Use of Carbon Trading Schemes to Address Climate Change." Dozens of protests took place during the UN conference on Dec. 6 as a Global Day of Action on climate change.
Dec. 1 saw a takeover of the offices of Environmental Defense, one of the Big Ten mainstream U.S. organizations, by climate justice activists denouncing ED's role in promoting carbon trading. Dr. Rachel Smolker, daughter of one of ED's founders, read a moving statement including that ED has become:
"the darling of the corporate world: advocating for 'market incentives' to 'encourage' corporations to stop their destructive practices, provided they do not cause 'economic hardship.' Like the corporations you have befriended, you too have become entirely beholden to the gods of endless economic growth....Carbon emissions trading is now formally enshrined within the Kyoto Protocol, and within almost every state, federal and international initiative for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It has in fact become pretty much the only game in town....I can hear my father rolling over in his grave!...I have now come to see [ED] as a primary obstacle to averting planetary crisis: the architects and powerful advocates of extraordinarily dangerous and distracting policy advice."
An indigenous activist from Rising Tide Ecuador, Leo Cerda, said, "ED wants to turn the atmosphere and forests into private property, and then give it away to the most polluting industries in the form of pollution allowances that can be bought and sold. Not only is this an ineffective way to control emissions, it is also a disaster for the poor and indigenous peoples who are not party to these markets and are most impacted by climate change."
Market-based "solutions" are now the fault line within the environmental movement.
--F.D.
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