Carbon trading lies at the centre of global climate policy and is projected to become one of the world’s largest commodities markets, yet it has a disastrous track record since its adoption as part of the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails outlines the limitations of an approach to tackling climate change which redefines the problem to fit the assumptions of neoliberal economics. It demonstrates that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market, has consistently failed to ´cap´ emissions, while the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects. This is illustrated with case studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Indonesia, India and Thailand.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen are discussing ways to expand the trading experiment, but the evidence suggests it should be abandoned. From subsidy shifting to regulation, there is a plethora of ways forward without carbon trading – but there are no short cuts around situated local knowledge and political organising if climate change is to be addressed in a just and fair manner.

 

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Download: www.dhf.uu.se/pdffiler/cc7/cc7_web.pdf [PDF 8.5mb]

 

The 20 page pamphlet -- “Hoodwinked in the Hothouse” (borrowed with permission from CTW) -- covers topics as diverse as Clean Coal, Agrofuels, Geoengineering, Carbon Offsets and over a dozen other non-solutions to the climate crisis, all in concise, colorfully illustrated and information packed essays.

You can order these booklets *FREE* from Rising Tide by contacting FalseSolutions- AT-RisingTideNorthAmerica-DOT-org. (If you cover shipping costs that’s great, and of course donations to our 100% volunteer run organization are greatly appreciated!).

The book includes writings from the World Development Movement, Corporate Watch, the World Rainforest Movement, Rachel Smolker, Rory Cox, the Transnational Institute, Oscar Reyes, and Alter Eco, as well as photography and artwork from Ben Powless, Tamra Gilbertson, Mike Wells, Appalachian Voices, Jorge Alcoreza, Andy Singer and the Beehive Design Collective.

 

Download Hoodwinked in the Hothouse [PDF 2.9mb]

 

As criticism of agrofuels grows, the European Commission, various EU governments and international bodies are now developing ‘sustainability’ criteria and standards for their use, but it is unlikely that any set of criteria can mitigate against the large-scale impact of agrofuels. This report summarises EU policy making on agrofuels to date.

A new paper published by Carbon Trade Watch, in conjunction with nine other organisations from Germany, Indonesia, Spain, Denmark, the UK and Argentina, sets out critical concerns regarding the rapid expansion of the agrofuel industry.

Carbon offsets are the modern day indulgences, sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sins. Scratch the surface, however, and a disturbing picture emerges, where creative accountancy and elaborate shell games cover up the impossibility of verifying genuine climate change benefits, and where communities in the South often have little choice as offset projects are inflicted on them.

This report argues that offsets place disproportionate emphasis on individual lifestyles and carbon footprints, distracting attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches involves moving away from the marketing gimmicks, celebrity endorsements, technological quick fixes, and the North/South exploitation that the carbon offsets industry embodies.

Read introduction in swedish here

The climate change debate will heat up further this week with the publication of an exhaustively-documented new book which claims that the dominant “carbon trading” approach, adopted by the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, is both ineffective and unjust.

The book, published by Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold Foundation together with the international Durban Group for Climate Justice and the UK-based NGO The Corner House, argues that carbon trading slows the social and technological change needed to cope with global warming by unnecessarily prolonging the world’s dependence on oil, coal and gas. 

This joint publication of Centre for Civil Society in Durban and TNI explores the impacts of the carbon market in South Africa. Connecting energy privatisation with issues around the enclosure of the atmosphere, this collections of essays gives a good grounding in the justice implications of the new carbon market. 

This briefing examines the relationship between free-market economic forces and climate change policy while scrutinising the rhetoric and reality behind promises on climate made by the most powerful politicians in the world – the G8. It also explores the origins of free-market environmentalism and analyses the conflicts and synergies that arise when the worlds of trade and environment collide. June 2005

Carbon Trade Watch explores the fraudulent and neo-colonial dimensions of the new trade in greenhouse gases in this essay in the December issue of the red-green journal Capitalism Nature Socialism.