'Obscenity' of carbon trading (Kevin Smith/BBC)

If we want to curb climate change, carbon trading won't do, argues Kevin Smith in the Green Room this week. From the Stern Review to Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme, he argues, the aim of reducing emissions has been perverted by neo-liberal dogma and corporate self-interest.

In 1992, an infamous leaked memo from Lawrence Summers, who was at the time Chief Economist of the World Bank, stated that "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that".

The recently released Stern Review on climate change, written by a man who occupied the same position at the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, applies a similar sort of free market environmentalism to climate change.

Sir Nicholas Stern argues that the cost-effectiveness of making emissions reductions is the most important factor, advocating mechanisms such as carbon pricing and carbon trading.
***
In a similar way, Stern's cost-benefit analysis reduces important debates about the complex issue of climate change down to a discussion about numbers and graphs that ignores unquantifiable variables such as human lives lost, species extinction and widespread social upheaval.

Kevin Smith is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute which studies the impacts of carbon trading on society and the environment

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6132826.stm

The trading of certain pollutants is truly obscene -- mercury comes to mind. When pollution is coming from a point source, such as a smokestack, those pollutants that have acute or even chronic toxic effects will have the greatest impact closest to the source. It only makes sense -- the impact of mercury will be the greatest in the immediate vicinity of the source where the concentrations are the highest. A heavy mercury polluter that buys pollution credits from a low mercury polluter will not prevent the impacts near the high polluter.

However, when we think of a global pollutant such as carbon dioxide, the buying and selling of credits makes sense. Carbon dioxide is not toxic per se but has a cumulative effect as carbon dioxide concentrations increase. Although global mixing of gases is not perfect by any means, we can conceive of the atmosphere as an inverted mixing bowl in which gases released in one part of the world are fairly rapidly distributed globally.

Ultimately, we must see significant net reductions in CO2 emissions. However, I don't agree with the notion that carbon trading is a bad idea.