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Carbon Commodities Climate Change Political Nightmare

I Won’t Wear A Wristband For Carbon Trading

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo

So, tens of thousands of people have made their way to the Copenhagen Climate Change negotiations. Now that they’re sealed in the conference, in all that holy, heady air of importance and relevance, they won’t be able to escape the dominant narrative of the agenda : the implementation of Carbon Trading.

This could be the largest appropriation of commonly owned resources the world has even known. By the banks :-

https://www.bluenext.fr/

Carbon Trading. Will it work ? Many people fear it will not have the kind of weight and reach of other policies. Some even conclude it will be as unworkable and unproductive as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme has been.

Can you price Carbon ? Can you give Carbon emissions a price that deters people from making future emissions ? There is a very widely held notion that environmental taxation, markets or fines are effective. But can this kind of policy framework be effective for the most prevalent of environmental bads : Carbon ?

Sometimes the obvious limitations of the policymaking proposals make me feel like I’m living in a cartoon, probably the same way that Kartoon Kate feels :-

Friends of the Earth recently published their report on the basic element of Carbon Trading : offsets, calling them a Dangerous Distraction :-

https://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/dangerous_distraction.pdf

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