Friday, 22 November 2013

How Carbon Trading Can Be a False Solution

As I have put it two posts before, carbon trading is the idea of creating a commercial market for processes which inevitably puts carbon into the atmosphere a mean to responsibly put the same amount of carbon back to a safe storage.

The problem the world is facing is that special interest groups, such as oil producers and coal producers have billions of dollars worth of "goods" underground. They want to make maximum profit - any corporation's only reason of survival. If there is a price on pollution, their "product" can become unattractive in the market place - hence a lower profit.

I am sceptical about letting these profiteers having control of the carbon trading market. False sequestration storage, temporary instead of long term storage of carbon are just possible areas of fraud. However, so far the best method to mobilize humanity is via commercial exchange - a win-win strategy in which the trading partners are equal partners, both sides rewarded by benefits to each other and themselves.

To set the market going, government should set "caps" to the amount of pollution their countries are putting into the atmosphere. These caps should be informed by science. It has been argued that developed countries get to the current position via polluting the atmosphere. It is unfair to deny the same path for the developing countries.

I totally agree.

A possible solution is to allow the developing countries a longer time period to eventually achieve zero carbon emission and then take down the emissions they have made while developed countries are obliged to a faster capping scheme to achieve zero carbon emission and then take down the emission their countries have made.

The first objective is to enforce the Kyoto Protocol. World nations must unite together to force USA to sign onto Kyoto Protocol and obliged to achieve the targets. It is politically difficult but the world needs to, this time, unite together and make that happens. For too long, the USA, with the support of her corporations, has been a bully. It is time the world act together. Citizens of USA, it is time for you to demonstrate your democracy is really a democracy. Tell your government and your corporations that it is about the survival of our grandchildren and hence it is OUR business. Act now!

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