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Agriculture

How Carbon Trading Undermines Positive Approaches to the Climate Crisis

by Larry Lohmann

talk | published March 2008 | summary | PDF

Carbon trading proponents often assert that trading is merely a way of finding the most cost-effective means of reaching an emissions goal and a source of funding that leaves everything else exactly as it is. In fact, carbon trading undermines a number of existing and proposed positive measures for tackling climate change

Carbon Trading A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

The globe is warming. The more carbon dioxide pours into the air, the less stable the climate becomes and the more urgent it becomes to leave remaining fossil fuels in the ground. Yet the dominant neoliberal approach to the crisis -- carbon trading -- is failing. It is slowing social and technological change; dispossessing ordinary people in the South of their lands and futures; undermining already-existing positive approaches; and prolonging industrialised societies' dependence on fossil fuels. This book lays out the case and describes what can be done.

Ways forward Chapter 5 of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

Chapter 5 of the book, "Carbon Trading", dissects and sets aside the claim that "there is no alternative to carbon trading". It cites conventional regulation, public works, legal action, green taxes, popular movements against fossil fuel use, and the shifting of subsidies away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy. For a more democratic and effective climate politics, the debate over climate needs to be conducted not only by corporations, ministries, specialists and big NGOs but by a wider public as well.

Introduction: A new fossil fuel crisis Chapter 1 of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

Chapter 1 of the book, "Carbon Trading", traces the growing climate crisis to the mining of coal, oil and gas, and describes the growing political conflict over how to divide up the world's capacity to clean its atmosphere. It outlines the dangers of the crisis to people's survival and livelihoods, explores the political nature and implications of the problem, and sketches reasonable and unreasonable solutions. The flow of fossil carbon out of the ground, it points out, has to be slowed and ultimately halted.

'Made in the USA': A short history of carbon trading Chapter 2 of Carbon Trading:A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

Chapter 2 of the book, "Carbon Trading", tells the extraordinary story of how corporations, academics, governments, United Nations agencies and environmentalists united around a neoliberal or 'market' approach to climate change emanating from North America. They made pollution trading -- a little-tested, highly-theoretical instrument designed merely to save industrial polluters money in the short-term -- the centrepiece of international efforts to tackle climate change.

Lessons unlearned: Pollution trading's failures Chapter 3 of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

Chapter 3 of the book, "Carbon Trading", explains why carbon trading -- one of the largest world markets ever created -- is ineffective in dealing with the climate crisis. It demonstrates that the experience of the United States in pollution trading is an argument against, rather than for, making carbon markets the centrepiece of action on global warming. It explores property rights and privatisation; emissions trading vs. structural change; and the special problems of carbon projects.

Offsets: The fossil economy's new arena of conflict Chapter 4 of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power

by Larry Lohmann (editor)

report | published October 2006 | summary | PDF

Chapter 4 of the book, "Carbon Trading", describes how supposedly carbon-'saving' projects set up in countries of the South to 'compensate' for continued fossil fuel use are helping to disposses ordinary people of their land, water, air -- and their futures. Projects to plant trees, burn methane from waste dumps, improve efficiency and promote renewable energy are described in ten countries, together with the tensions and conflicts created.

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture Whose Risks? Whose Gains?

by Nicholas Hildyard

talk | published November 1998 | summary | full document

A summary of the ecological risks of genetic engineering in agriculture and suggestions for resisting its introduction.

10. Food? Health? Hope? Genetic Engineering and World Hunger

by Sarah Sexton, Nicholas Hildyard and Larry Lohmann

briefing | published October 1998 | summary | full document

The biotechnology industry claims that genetic engineering in agriculture is necessary to feed a growing world population. Yet, far from preventing world starvation, genetic engineering threatens to exacerbate the social and ecological causes of hunger by forcing farmers to pay for their right to fertile seeds, threatening crop yields, undermining biodiversity and reducing the access of poorer people to food.

Ten Reasons Why GE Crops Won’t Feed the World

by The Corner House

article | published 1998 | summary | full document

There are at least 10 good reasons why the widespread adoption of genetic engineering in agriculture will lead to more hungry people, not fewer.

Too Many for What? The Social Generation of Food “Scarcity” and “Overpopulation”

by Nicholas Hildyard

article | published November 1996 | summary | full document

Sustainable Agriculture - For Whom?

by Nicholas Hildyard

talk | published 1996 | summary | full document


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