The Failure of the Carbon Market

“The ETS is not fit for purpose,” Joanna Cabello from Carbon Trade Watch said in Climate News Network’s story. “It has generated windfall profits for polluting corporations, postponed the needed transition away from fossil fuels, and its unintended consequences are locking the EU into another generation of energy production based on fossil fuels. These structural flaws remain unaddressed by the [European] Commission.

“Instead of taking their responsibility, politicians have voluntarily put their main instrument to fight climate change in the hands of the financial markets. As we know, market mechanisms have their own dynamic. Profit-making and not fighting climate change has become the overriding objective of the players involved in carbon trading.”

Truth Dig

This is why it was completely asinine to begin with. This was never meant to be a solution to combat climate change. It was a set-up to halt the debate (as if there should be debate) a la the rhetoric of 'they just want to tax and control you' as well as provide yet another venue for polluters to profit and keep small business and developing countries in check.

It's so easy to call it a scam when that's exactly what it is, just not the one we're lead to believe it is.

reply to post by Kali74

The ETS:
en.wikipedia.org - European Union Emission Trading Scheme...

The European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), also known as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, was the first large emissions trading scheme in the world, and remains the biggest.[1] It was launched in 2005 to combat climate change and is a major pillar of EU climate policy.[2] As of January 2013, the EU ETS covers more than 11,000 factories, power stations, and other installations with a net heat excess of 20 MW in 31 countries—all 27 EU member states plus Croatia, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein.[3] The installations regulated by the EU ETS are collectively responsible for close to half of the EU's emissions of CO2 and 40% of its total greenhouse gas emissions.
...........

No matter how I look at it, transitioning away from fossil fuels is expensive.

Is there an easy way out? Don't think so.

Although I think hydrogen fuel and nuclear power is a possibility. But we're not there. In fact, to get there we'd have to build a whole hydrogen fueling structure and policy for producing ti. Not easy.

We'll probably just start using a lot more natural gas.

I don't see anyting happening quickly without great economic upheaval. Even if we had a superior technology today it would still have to be applied and there'd be lots of people out of work. We can't just switch technologies. It requires people to switch their skillset which means going to school. And they'd already be in huge debt due to fossil fuel investment going sour.

People have invested their whole life in fossil fuels. Even nations. That's why it matters.

reply to post by jonnywhite


We'd probably be a lot further along if it hadn't been for this nonsense. In fact I have to wonder if the economic crash would have happened to the degree it did if innovating had been going on instead some false argument that had all the polluters laughing to the bank.

I think there are some very promising alternatives up and coming, I'm doing some research now on the topic. Hopefully I can get it from my brain to a thread.

The carbon tax seems to be a way for countries to get money from their citizens to help pay off their national debts so they can go on wasting money trying to make their countries look better than other countries.

reply to post by rickymouse


Nah. Citizens aren't taxed for carbon, well at least not here in the US, I'm not sure about elsewhere. The big polluters are supposed to be taxed and even though they cry about it and use it to fuel their propaganda that AGW is a scam to make everyone pay more taxes, it's exactly what they lobbied for:

When the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated in 1997, the European Union opposed the United States’ proposal to introduce carbon trading and “offsetting” as a form of compliance with mandated greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Instead, the EU favoured coordinated policies and measures.

But by 2001, when the US unilaterally abandoned climate negotiations, the EU had already reversed its position and enthusiastically supported delivering the fate of climate policy to a speculative market.

In 2005, industrial lobbies and big fossil fuel corporations, such as BP and Shell, finally got what they wanted: a market for CO2 emissions rights that would allow industries to continue polluting and even reap a profit.

The first phase of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), from 2005 to 2007, was, by any standard of evaluation, a complete disaster. CO2 emissions from covered sources went up, not down. The 2007 cap was 8.3% higher than the 2005 verified emissions level.

The second phase, from 2008 to 2012, was only marginally less bad. The cap was only 2% lower than the 2005 emissions.

Only in 2009 did emissions fall — due to the economic crisis that reduced production and, consequently, fuel use, an October 2010 Friends of the Earth Europe report said.

Green Left

reply to post by Kali74


The consumer pays the tax eventually. If the tax is on the manufacturer than the manufacturer passes it on with a handling fee attached to cover expenses plus the profit margin.

Originally posted by Kali74
Nah. Citizens aren't taxed for carbon, well at least not here in the US, I'm not sure about elsewhere. The big polluters are supposed to be taxed and ....

If you think the citizens won't ultimately be the ones paying the taxes, there must be something you haven't thought of.

If ___________ (insert company there) doesn't meet emissions requirements and thus has to buy carbon credits from someone/thing else, that extra cost will be passed down through the chain and such in a way that makes the end-user ante up for it.

This is much like how when I was working in the mom/pop pizza shop as a teen in the '80's and minimum wage was 3.35 and the supreme pizza was 11.95, and when minimum wage went up to over 5 dollars, the supreme went up to over 14 dollars. Add anything to the cost of operation and the cost of the produced goods or services will increase in kind.

True and true.
A side effect most likely but not really what I wanted to draw attention to

Originally posted by Kali74
True and true.
A side effect most likely but not really what I wanted to draw attention to

Interesting, none the less is that the big petro-chemical companies are oft portrayed as walking hand-in-hand with the Republican party of the US and other conservative parties elsewhere but it always seems to be the liberal parties giving them the biggest breaks.

That is, unless I've missed the cues elsewhere.

reply to post by abecedarian


It was a liberal/green idea to tax carbon. The carbon market wasn't. But what you say is true, Democrats (our supposed liberal party, though anything but) are just as heavily lobbied as Republicans.

reply to post by Kali74


Yup - it's funny (or sad, really) because the whole carbon credit/trading scheme was something put together to appease all the free-market financial cronies. It is something they've implemented in the past, with some success.

But with a problem this large and this complex it definitely leaves too many loopholes for exploitation. So even though it's exactly what they push for, it's also the number #1 thing they can then turn around and use to go "seeeeee: climate change is a scam wakka wakka."



If you guys want to see a carbon tax solution that really does force big industry to foot the bill, while empowering the rest of us as consumers to drive the market towards cleaner alternatives - you should look into the concept of fee & dividend:

Fee and dividend



There's also the awesome idea of simply putting the honus on banks to support clean energy initiatives, and provide loans for such projects at bare minimum interest rates that make them truly cost effective:

Fighting Global Warming Without Carbon Taxes


But none of the crony capitalist big shots, Liberal or Conservative, want to talk about any of that - because it puts the money and the power back into our hands instead of theirs.