Pictures from the Carbon "Offset" Market
first published 5 September 2007
Trading in carbon "offsets" constitutes one part of carbon trading schemes such as those associated with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the Kyoto Protocol, and voluntary schemes to "compensate" for airline passengers' emissions and the like. (The other part of carbon trading is emissions trading.)
As this slide show illustrates, "offset" trading selects against immediate investment in long-term structural change away from fossil fuel dependence in both South and North. It does not recognize or support communities engaging in effective action on climate change. It carries high opportunity costs and requires heavy, complex and unaccountable bureaucracy and centralization. Its climatic effects are impossible to measure, meaning that on balance it is likely to damage the fight for a livable climate, and it is rife with other irresoluble enforcement obstacles.
Related articles of interest:
- Upsetting the Offset The Political Economy of Offset Markets
- Carbon Trading How It Works and Why It Fails
- Pictures from the Carbon "Offset" Market: Part 2
- A Death in Durban Capitalist Patriarchy, Global Warming Gimmickry and our Responsibility for Rubbish
- The CO2 Alibi (video)
- Mausam The Inaugural Issue of an Indian Climate Change Magazine
- Unregulatability in Financial and Carbon Markets
- Neoliberalism and the Calculable World The Rise of Carbon Trading
- Pictures from the Emissions Market
- Aid, the Clean Development Mechanism and Some Open Questions An Article for Development Today
- Making and Marketing Carbon Dumps Commodification, Calculation and Counterfactuals in Climate Change Mitigation
- Carbon Trading A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power