Tamra Gilbertson and Kevin Smith, members of Carbon Trade Watch, spoke at the University Friday afternoon about the negative effects of carbon trading, both globally and in the United States.
The Survival Center sponsored the event.
Carbon Trade Watch is a project of the Transnational Institute, and associated with the Durban Group for Climate Justice, a group concerned with global climate change and carbon trading.
Carbon trading, or cap and trade, is a process in which a limit is placed on how many carbon emissions a factory can produce. Higher polluting industries can buy unused carbon credits from lesser polluting companies, or corporations can fund projects in other parts of the world to create excess carbon credits, which can then be sold for large profits across the globe.
Smith, who has researched carbon trading since 2000, described the process as “basically a system designed to allow companies, countries, and industries to buy their way out of combating climate change, either by trading amongst themselves or investing in ‘climate friendly’ projects.”
Carbon Trade Watch is concerned with the cap and trade process because the system is “massively built upon and structured by the biggest polluters in the world” so companies can continue polluting and making profits, Gilbertson said. She has been researching the effects of carbon trading worldwide for six years.
“Emissions trading would make money for some very large corporations, but I don’t believe it would do anything for global climate change,” Gilbertson said.
Currently, there are 11 separate bills sitting in Congress regarding the implementation of a national carbon trading system. The United States has no national regulations for carbon trading, but many statewide and industry-based agreements exist.
“In the future there may be some mandatory cap and trade (in the United States),” Smith said. “(It would be) privatizing the air, which invariably leads to capital accumulation. That results in income for the government.”
During the talk, Smith and Gilbertson each discussed specific topics about carbon trading in detail and showed a short film called “Cheat Neutral,” followed by audience discussion.
Smith focused on the process of carbon trading in the European Union, since there is already an established program in Europe. Since the first phase, 2005 to 2007, “emissions haven’t gone down in the EU, they’ve gone up,” Smith said.
“The whole thing with carbon trading is the only people who benefit from it are the big polluters who are making enormous money out of it,” Smith said. “It’s running on the principle of polluter profits, rather than polluter pays.”
In the EU, carbon permits are often given to companies for free, leading to a rise in consumer prices, which, along with other flaws, allow high polluting corporations to draw billions of dollars in profits each year.
Gilbertson discussed the trend for northern companies to offset pollution by investing in low polluting projects in the “global south” under the Clean Development Mechanism. The northern companies gain a surplus of carbon credits and reap the benefits from local towns. The process is detrimental to local communities, and it’s “delaying the transition to low carbon technology,” Gilbertson said.
“What we’re constantly being told is it’s the most economically efficient way (to lower carbon emissions),” Gilbertson said. “(It’s) not taking in the whole holistic perspective of what’s happening in these south countries.”
Solving the problems with carbon emissions isn’t going to be easy because climate change involves many different factors that need to be examined, Gilbertson said.
International studies graduate student Evan Shenkin said that learning about carbon trading and its effects is crucial to making a change in the world.
“It helped me to see that carbon trading is a corporate smokescreen towards addressing the issue of climate change,” Shenkin said. “As awareness increases, I think popular, local movements will develop alternatives to carbon trading.”
Leland Earls, co-director of the ASUO Survival Center, agreed that “exposing it as an illegitimate solution” is one of the first steps to reform.
“It’s important to remind people the changes are absolutely necessary to life on Earth,” Earls said. “Carbon trading, if you look into it, is ridiculous on many levels. It allows big industries to pollute.”
More information about Carbon Trade Watch, plus videos and free publications, can be found at www.carbontradewatch.org.