Free PDF Book. Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails
We received this email via the Climate Camp Mailing lists and just had to link it to our website.
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce the release of our new book, “Carbon
Trading:
how it works and why it fails”, which can be freely downloaded from here
We hope this book can help to build strong debate and discussion
ahead
of Copenhagen and well after.
All the best,
Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes
Carbon Trade Watch, Transnational Institute
CARBON TRADING – HOW IT WORKS AND WHY IT FAILS
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 (EU ETS),
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.
- Chapter 1 »
introduces carbon trading, how it works and some of the actors involved.
*Chapter 2 »
explores the origins and key actors involved in building the
architecture of emissions trading.
*Chapter 3 »
examines the performance of the EU ETS and
finds that it has generously
rewarded polluting companies while failing to reduce emissions. Many of
the scheme’s flaws, from the over-allocation of permits to pollute
onwards, are found to be fundamental to the cap and trade approach more
generally.
*Chapter 4 »
outlines the performance of the CDM and
looks at four case studies of
CDM projects in Thailand, India, Indonesia and
Brazil; it argues that
offsets projects, even those that promote renewable energy, will not be
a solution to climate change.
*Chapter 5 »
outlines what could work and ways forward for political organising
around questions of climate change.
Download ‘Carbon Trading :How it works and why it fails’ here