Cap N Trade - Who benefits?
The Cap and Trade scheme is based on the rhetoric that we should ‘put a price on carbon’ and that governments do their duty of reducing the allotted permits given to industries towards a goal of reducing emissions to a theoretical sustainable limit of 350ppm. That polluters will innovate to reduce their emissions through a vast global trading scheme that allows polluters who cannot meet their caps purchase it through innovators and to pay off developing nations to ‘mitigate’ and ‘adapt’ to climate change.
It’s a scheme that, while making regulatory sense, is filled with loopholes that allows many industrials lobbyists and financiers to manoeuvre their existing corporations without vastly restructuring their business model. After all, paying off others is just another Business As Usual model.
The UN has the proposed CDM, while several other organizations have proposed various standards for carbon trading, such as the CER, VER, CCX, WWF gold standard. While the value of such markets can be an incentives for many companies to find ways to reduce carbon emissions and generate credits, and that developing nations may benefit, there is little certainty that ‘polluter pays’ principles will be carry fully to the hilt of the law, especially among the most those with political clout. Meanwhile, all sorts of ponzi schemes will certainly pass through without being scrutinized, or slip by through creative technicality.
Far from the mere promise of acting diligently, let us recall the lack of action since the Kyoto Protocol and the current dithering at the COP15. we call on world leaders not only to act firmly upon the rule of environmental law, but also offer stronger incentives to spur genuine sustainable efforts.
Annie Leonard has managed to present the situation in an engaging manner, watch The Story of Cap N Trade