drop me a line brian at risingtidenorthamerica dot org and we can mail you a copy of the book he edited on the topic (which you can also read online)… carbontradewatch dot org is also a great site and Teryn’s article today http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/07/08/new-climate-bill-may-create-a-super-lobby-of-powerful-opposition/ is also very good.

The problems with carbon trading are not incidental, they are fundamental.

It’s hard to get that across to folks, but to me it’s the single most important task at this point. In the words of Paraguayan activist Simone Lovera:

“If we hold up banners saying climate change kills and we want more government action, the very power groups driving the destruction will cheer and might give us even more carbon finance or agrofuels. Instead, we need to mobilise against the false solutions and for real, meaningful actions that will actually cut emissions and deliver climate justice.”

Look guys, I hate money as much as the next anarcho-syndicalist, but it is a serious mistake to pretend it doesn’t matter. Economic power is real power in the real world.

“our atmosphere is something we own in common” shouldn’t be so shocking.
I’m referencing the tragedy of the commons (if you haven’t read Hardin’s 1968 essay, you should, it’s available at http://dieoff.org/page95.htm). The discussion on pollution is germane, I don’t think “global warming” had quite entered the lexicon. Hardin believes the solution to such a tragedy is “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.” I tend to agree. People respond far more readily to economic incentives than to lectures about morality. And governance is our mechanism for mutual coercion.

The appropriate comparison is not slavery but fisheries. Compare a relatively recent, well-managed fishery like Alaskan Salmon to a very old, historically unmanaged fishery, like George’s Bank, which collapsed. Cascadia Brian may dislike that certain individuals and corporations profit from a natural resource, but short of a total fishing ban, which is never politically feasible until it’s too late (see George’s Bank), what other option do we have?

Look, I’m a pragmatist. I don’t want to save my soul, I want a decent world for my great-grandkids. I’m not in love with carbon trading. The important part is to put a money price on carbon emissions, because money is a kind of language both individuals and corporations respond to. The trading part is indeed a bone we throw to industry to make it politically feasible, because a straight tax is just a non-starter. Ideally the trading is a mechanism to reduce the total social cost of a given level of emissions reduction, and for sure the potential for abuse is vast. Which is why people like us who actually care need to work on it, rather than abandoning it to corporate lawyers to shape as they wish. I’m open to other ideas too, if they produce real results in the real world.

An us-and-them approach is not useful when trying to build broad coalitions. Which we need. Craig’s piece just reinforces views of environmentalism as something for wacko extremists. Public opinion is moving, oh… so… slowly…, in the right direction, let’s not marginalize ourselves.

Jay says “The purpose of tools is to build power to accomplish our goals.” Exactly. I maintain that abolitionist-style moralizing and 60’s-style oppositional protest are obsolete tools. (not that anyone brought them up, but so are labor unions and deconstructionism.) Power learns to deal with them. Old tools get dull. We need new ones.

I heard a pretty interesting lecture on the BBC today, it’s their sort of “big thinker of the year” lecture about the limits of markets in solving democracy’s problems. Highly relevant to the topic, and indeed the speaker references carbon trading and although he doesn’t dismiss it outright, he does point to the fact that it can encourage “the public” down some not so great intellectual pathways if our interest is in promoting concern for the ecology that keeps us all alive.

worth a listen:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kt7rg

it’s parts 1 of 4 as well as 4 of 4 where he talks about carbon trading.

Btw, the idea that because “our atmosphere is something we own in common” and therefore we should support carbon trading is one of the most preposterous claims I’ve ever seen on this website.

Carbon trading PRIVATIZES the right to pollute the atmosphere, effectively making it something we DO NOT own in common.

If you’d allow me to quote from the book “Carbon Trading” by Larry Lohmann (the whole book, but especially pages 75-85 should really be required reading for anyone talking about carbon trading):

“Property rights come in many shapes and sizes. A lot of property rights are temporary. Think of monthly or yearly leases. Think of mining, logging or grazing concessions that governments give out to corporations for 30 years or 75 years. Think of copyrights, trademarks, and licenses. Think of fishing quotas or seed, gene or drug patents, all of which expire after a certain length of time.

All of these temporary property rights have been used to privatize or enclose various goods. All have been used to make billions for private companies. And all have been used to transfer wealth and power to the rich, sometimes igniting bitter conflict over democracy and how human beings’ environments are to be treated. Emissions allowances are no diferrent. Industry, economists, govern-ments and legal scholars all agree that, in giving away these allowances, emissions trading schemes do give away something quite substantial.

As the International Accounting Standards Board notes with regard to the EU ETS, allowances are ‘assets…owned by the company concerned…and as such represent a significant and immediate creation of value to companies’. They should be seen as a ‘government grant, and accounted for as such, i.e. treated as deferred income in the balance sheet and recognized as income on a systematic basis’.

Temporary or not, emissions permits constitute a ‘major input factor to production.’

Allowances aren’t valuable just because they enable polluters to avoid having to spend money on pollution control. They also enable corporations to borrow money more easily and give them a better share price. And they set a precedent for granting them further entitlements. They can also be bought and sold for clear profit. They have market value.”

No I don’t have dreadlocks, (and neither does Craig for goodness sakes!) but the point is that paying attention to what “economics” and “psychology” won’t tell us what we want.

To continue the analogy, with a hat tip to economics, the problem of slavery actually fits the current one. Like now it is rural poor whites that were the most vehement defenders of slavery. Why? Because they had theirs and they didn’t want it taken away by freed blacks. They were scared of upsetting the status quo because they feared for their jobs and their “way of life”. So on the contrary, this is a very analogous situation. Rural working class whites, and their defenders in Congress are probably the most anti-climate folks out there and want to maintain the status quo because they have theirs and don’t want it taken away.

But the anti-slavery movement didn’t try to appease these folks, they convinced more people (and decision makers) that they were right. This isn’t about us being self-righteous and comparing ourselves to the abolition movement, but is taking a look at history and using successful movements of the past as examples to learn from, and we have much to learn.

Because under this thinking ACES isn’t a tool, ACES is an outcome of organizing and advocacy. And less than stellar organizing and advocacy at that. The purpose of tools is to build power to accomplish our goals, and under this definition ACES is not a tool – it does not help the climate/clean energy movement build power and accomplish our goals.

Indeed, history will judge today’s dirty energy economy very similarly to the way we judge the system of slavery – abhorrent, despicable, and destined to be overturned. Let’s just hope we get to the point where we’re looking back on this struggle and how long it took to win.

And Joe Barton is definitely a barbarian.

However, as Kyle mentioned, we are on a timeline. This makes a huge difference. With slavery, there was no point where slavery couldn’t be solved. Climate tipping points change the game. At some point in the very near future (if it hasn’t already passed) we wont be able to fix this regardless of how bold our actions are. The most importnat thing to do now is to start. We’ve spent 8 years with government funded climate denial, this is an amazing departure

Now, that said, I think youth need to be hardlining the moral message, we in no way should be the ones compromising. This is our future and both inaction and weak action is unacceptable. Within this, I think there is room to directly oppose the bill.

Now here is where the timeline problems come in. Environmental groups cannot keep antagonizing eachother. Friends of the Earth and NRDC need eachother. We need the fringe and we need the deal cutters. And they need to be working together, even if they are calling for something different. We all need to be pushing in the same direction. If the subsequent legislation that gets passed isn’t strong enough, it’s our fault for not doing enough. We need to take what we can get, learn from our mistakes, and move onto the next opportunity.

Though ACES was a scientific failure in terms of reducing emissions at the level we need, it was a political success in that this is the first time the US has ever passed climate legislation focused on reducing GHGs. The debate is being reframed and shaped in our favor.

A few fringe anti-slavery groups attacked the bill, claiming that it was too little, too late. “Slavery is wrong, period.” said Josiah Bartlett, of Patriots for Freedom (PfF) Tthis bill will actually allow the number of slaves to increase until 1880, as slave owners here can buy new slaves, so long as other slaves abroad are ‘freed’. This will create a perverse incentive for people to capture slaves abroad so that they can free them, and slavery will continue to reign in our nation. This madness has to end now.”