This is a strategic solution and has been imposed for So2, nox emissions, and has been hailed as a smashing success. Companies then stand to profit from being clean, ones that arent stand to lose tons of money. Real solution for a real world

If the argument is that we need to go for command and control, then I’m all for it (but good luck getting business on board). However, I don’t agree that a tax will somehow have less capitalistic tendencies.

The question is: What has the best chance of being approved by congress in time for it to actually matter? There are always going to be better alternatives, but we can’t assume we live in a utopian society. We are working with a very real timeline which will force us to make compromises (however much we hate to admit it). I think the battle against big business can continue, but we need to make sure it doesn’t compromise the goals we absolutely need to achieve.

With that said, I don’t like the neoliberal economic model and think we need to get as far away from that as possible. However, the mindset and infrastructure and mindset we are trying to change will come through smaller policies. Cap-and-Auction, strong CAFE and RES standards, combined with massive investment into renewable energy and green jobs will get us much closer to social and environmental justice than opposing the growing political will. The momentum is there, lets help shape what it creates – not isolate ourselves on the fringe. These policies are going to be created within the next few years. With progress already underway on many it is unlikely we will be able to completely shift gears and still have time to address climate change.

We need to keep our high goals and ideals, but we also need to be strategic.

Furthermore “Polluter Pays” carries the assumption that you can undo the effects of the pollution with money, which is not often the case (a main point of the environmental justice movement). Germany was able to reduce SO2 emmission faster than the US who used a cap and trade approach by simply ordering the companies to meet the requirements. There is also the implicit assumption that we have to allow corporations to pass on costs to their consumers rather preventing that through any number of actions. E.G. New Deal type price controls, subsidies from taxing the wealthy, better yet democratically socializing energy production. Its crucial to be aware how climate interventions affect the world capitalist system’s markets, but not to preserve those markets for their own sake; profit motive is a poor tool for creating social/ecological justice.

The California Environmental Justice Movement, that has taken such an admirably principled and pragmatic stance against the nonsense of carbon trading, is in a uniquie position to fully understand the inherent vulnerablities to corporate self-interest of such schemes through the experiences of the corruption and the environmental racism of the RECLAIM programme and SO2 trading under the Clean Air act.

The question of whether or not to auction permits is a minor distraction from the fact that such schemes are incredibly susceptible at every stage of both the design and implementation to the influence of corporate interests who will seek to use them to their own advantage.

There is no way that the creation and market-distribution of a new set of property rights in this way is ever going to either benefit the poor, or address the issue of climate change. Carbon trading is all about land grabbing and capital accumulation.. the same old issues in a new, greenwashed guise.

There are a number of other measures that can be taken in the face of climate change, at the level of the individual, communities and governments, and hair-brained carbon trading schemes serve only to crowd out the effective responses while making large profits for the biggest pollutors as they continue with business-as-usual.

This declaration is enormously inspiring and heartening to the many groups around the world (many of whom have signed the Durban Declaration on Climate Justice) who have been exposed for some years now to the corruption, oppression and ineffectiveness of the global carbon market for some years now.