Carbon Trading

Carbon Trading

In an article entitled “Made in the USA, A short history of carbon trading” an argument is made against Carbon Trading, “how corporations, academics, governments, United Nations agencies and environmentalists united around a neoliberal or ‘market approach to climate change emanating from North America”.(p31)

Here, the system of Carbon Trading is seen as a form of ‘global inequality’, one which threatens all live on the planet. The consequences of climate change, it is argued, are multiple, and many sided, different people see the crisis in different ways. While for northern elites, it posses problems such as how are they to maintain their power & privilege, how are corporations and society in general going to cope with a new threat to a fossil-fuelled industrial structure, and whether or not the various climate factors be either contained or exploited. While, for Southern elites the questions such as how best to mitigate unanticipated catastrophes and increased flows of environmental refugees, how can the situation be prevented from being used as an excuse for pushing to one side the South’s claim to industrialisation and its rightful share of global wealth, and how can the situation be used as political leverage. The situation, it is suggested, can’t be fixed without broad social and political change, it is especially seen as a threat to the largest energy companies, as well as the energy intensive private sector in general. The argument is made that there IS the political will, there is a problem  here however, as almost all of this will is directed towards technical, informational or market fixes entrusted to a handful of undemocratic institutions. Mick Kelly, from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia is quoted as saying; “Acceptance of the carbon trading provisions of the Kyoto Protocol represents an article of faith, faith in the free market and faith in the process of globalisation. It rests on an ideological stance”.(p32)
The situation is seen as ‘business as usual’, the proposed solutions seen in Carbon Trading are seen as a promise to fix the problem, while leaving everything else (politics & economics) just as it is. Here, the process of moving toward a Carbon Trading Market is seen as a process that brought international action on climate change within a US-style framework of neoliberal policy. It is argued that the process has been formed around three interlinked strategies, each of which reinforces the others. “The first strategy works to reshape or suppress understanding of the climate problem so that public reaction to it will present less of a political threat to corporations. The second strategy appeals to technological fixes as a way of bypassing debate over fossil fuels while helping to spur innovations that can serve as new sources of profit. The third strategy appeals to a market fix that secures the property rights of heavy Northern fossil users over the world’s carbon absorbing capacity while creating new opportunities for corporate profit through trade”.(p34)
However, it is stressed here that Carbon Trading is not a corporate conspiracy, it is a joint invention of civil society as well as business and the state. NGO’s have been nearly as prominent in its development a private corporations it is argued. “The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an organisation with an annual budget 3.5 times that of the World Trade Organisation, meanwhile joined the European Roundtable of Industrialists (UNICE) and the US think tank inspired Centre for European Policy Studies in support of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. WWF also helped develop an eco-label for the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism projects. Greenpeace, for its part, has moved from being critical of corporate lobby groups and carbon trading to complete acceptance”..(p58)
It is suggested that most Northern members of the NGO grouping on climate change, the Climate Action Network, have given their total support to the carbon market. However, it is stated that some NGO’s have been critical, and those groups are being urged “ to unite behind an entirely bizarre, incomprehensible, and totally corruptible system of carbon trading”.(p59)
It is suggested that as Carbon Trading became centre stage of international climate policy, that UN climate conferences became more like trade fairs than international environmental negotiations. From the earliest days of Carbon Trading ideology, groups such as the International Petroleum Environmental Conservation Association have been in negotiations with national governments to promote market approaches to climate change. During recent UN climate negotiations carbon traders, consultants, manufacturers associations, petroleum and mining companies lobbyists have easily outnumbered government delegates and environmentalists. This weight of numbers has meant that legislation and policy has been directed by the business world. “The World Bank, which provides billions of dollars in public money to fossil fuel companies  for their production and transport expenses, profitably expanded its remit to host seven different carbon funds aimed at providing cheap credits to corporations to allow them to continue to use fossil fuels”.(p59)

The influence of the petroleum industry goes deeper, through lobby groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the industry brings its full weight of influence. The ICC has played a significant role in recent negotiations, ever since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Before this summit, together with Shell, Texaco, Mobil, and Chevron, the ICC sent a 30 person delegation to Senegal to round up support for the CDM from over 20 African nations. In return for their support the delegation promised foreign investment and technological transfer. The influence of business has increased as carbon trading has been gradually fused with UN policy and apparatus, staff of corporations and other organisations in a position to benefit from carbon trading gradually occupied positions of influence within UN expert panels. Ironically, these would then determine the rules and legislation for the new system, and hence govern their future profits. “The market fix, the technological fix and the knowledge fix have come together to encase international climate politics in a debate in which the only questions spoken are the narrow ones large corporations most want to hear”.(p63)