Climate Change and Carbon Trade

Abstract

"The hegemony of the G8 in international fora such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has meant that the response to climate change has been largely dictated by dominant neoliberal economic norms. Despite the gravity of the threat, climate policy has been chosen not on the basis of its eff ectiveness in reducing emissions, but by its compatibility with the existing economic system. Given that the primary role of the G8 is to safeguard the stability of the international economic order, it stands to reason that their main concern in addressing the threat of climate change would be to ensure that the economies of the world’s richest countries are not adversely impacted. A number of economists, agencies and NGOs have been working for some years to promote the use of market forces to solve environmental problems. By assigning a price to nature’s ‘services’, such as the earth’s ability to absorb greenhouse gases, proponents believe, markets will begin – in a language familiar to commodities brokers in the world’s financial centers. This can be seen most clearly in the climate change debate, where enormous amounts of time and energy have been devoted by business groups, NGOs, emissions brokers, governments, UN agencies and the G8 to creating a market for the world’s foremost greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide. [...] Through this process of creating a new commodity – carbon – the Earth’s ability and capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate hands that are destroying the climate. The problem of climate change requires not radical reductions at source, but the ‘invisible hand’ of the market to sweep up the mess in the most cost-eff ective manner possible. The neoliberal ethic embodied in power blocs such as the G8, themselves highly dependent on the fossil fuel economy, is ultimately what drives this agenda forward.", p. 17-18 and 23.