by Oscar Reyes and Tamra Gilbertson
report | published December 2009 | summary | PDF
This streamlined sequel to the 2006 book Carbon Trading brings climate activists up to date with the disastrous record of carbon trading -- which in the wake of the debacle at the Copenhagen climate negotiations continues to be world elites' main response to climate change.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published August 2009 | summary | PDF
One lesson the financial crisis teaches us is: beware of the new carbon markets that constitute today's main official response to climate change. These markets are startlingly similar to the financial derivatives markets that have thrown banking systems into a tailspin. (German version also available: click on "summary".)
by Larry Lohmann
presentation | published September 2008 | summary | PDF
Many new schemes are afoot to allow the North to pay the South for conserving its forests in return for permission to continue using fossil fuels. But how would a market in pollution rights generated by Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) play out in reality?
by Larry Lohmann
talk | published April 2008 | full document
A discussion hosted by the Climate Justice Chicago Coalition at De Paul University examines how carbon trading creates transferable rights to dump carbon, slows social and technological change, promotes socially and ecologically destructive practices and is ineffective and unjust. This TV programme was produced by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).
by Kevin Smith
article | published April 2008 | summary | PDF
Widely-publicized frauds in the carbon "offset" market have led to governmental and corporate proposals to apply standards. But no one has any standards that are working. And the more onerous any attempted regulation becomes, the more the market comes to be dominated by big corporate polluters with the money to work the system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
by The Corner House
news | published January 2005 | summary | full document
In December 2004, The Corner House began legal proceedings against the Export Credits Guarantee Department, claiming it had weakened its anti-corruption rules after consulting corporations only. It was awarded the first-ever full "protective costs order" to challenge the changed rules: The Corner House would not have to pay the Department's legal costs, even if it lost, because the challenge was in the public interest.
by Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite
briefing | published September 2004 | summary | full document | PDF
When TRIPS was signed in 1994, the United States, Europe and Japan dominated the world's software, pharmaceutical, chemical and entertainment industries. The rest of the world had little to gain by agreeing to these terms of trade for intellectual property. They did so because a failure of democratic processes nationally and internationally enabled a small group of men within the United States to capture the US trade-agenda-setting process, to draft intellectual property principles that became the blueprint for TRIPS and to crush resistance through US trade power.
by Sarah Sexton
presentation | published 9-11 May 2003 | summary | full document
The World Trade Organisation's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) could have a significant effect on human health, and health care services.
by Mike Davis
briefing | published December 2002 | summary | full document | PDF
A revised understanding of nineteenth cenutry famines illuminates many current challenges of 'development' and questions the wisdom of development policies still pursued today.
by Sarah Sexton
briefing | published July 2001 | summary | full document | PDF
by Nicholas Hildyard
talk | published 1998 | summary | full document
A presentation looking at whose interests the free market serves and whose environment is protected by market instruments such as labelling and property rights which concludes that leaving the environment to the market is a recipe for social injustice, authoritarianism, neo-colonialism and ecological suicide.
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published July 1996 | summary | full document
by Larry Lohmann
article | published September 1995 | summary | full document
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published February 1993 | summary | full document