Carbon Trading

The Climate Camp vs the Carbon Market

February 2009
TNI
Kevin Smith
The iniquities of emissions trading will bring thousands of protesters to the climate camp in the City of London, writes Kevin Smith.

In the Guardian newspaper on 23 February 2009, Julian Glover drew parallels between carbon trading and the notoriously corrupt practice of the Medieval church in selling pardons.

Climate Justice Now! No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people’s solutions!

February 2009
TNI

For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.

Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying “enough”, “ya basta”!

Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called “clean coal”, more nuclear power , agrofuels, even a “green new deal”. But these are not real solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these illusions.

Scrap carbon trading

February 2009
Oscar Reyes
The response of European political leaders to falling carbon prices is to call for a reformed and extended carbon market.

Carbon offsets undermine the effort to tackle climate change.

December 2008
TNI
Kevin Smith
Carbon offsets undermine the effort to tackle climate change, argues Kevin Smith as part of an Economist debate.

This house believes that carbon offsets undermine the effort to tackle climate change.

Any climate change practice or policy should be assessed against the criterion of whether or not it enables us to move closer to leaving more fossil fuels in the ground. Carbon offsets are doing exactly the opposite.

Online debates demonstrate public skepticism about carbon trading

December 2008
Larry Lohmann

Michael Wara of Stanford, together with Kevin Smith of Carbon Trade Watch
and Platform and others, have won the Economist magazine's online debate
on carbon offset trading against Henry Derwent of the International
Emissions Trading Association, businessman Mark Trexler and others.

Some 55 per cent of readers voted in favor of the resolution: "This house
believes that carbon offsets undermine the effort to tackle climate
change"

Emma Duncan, the moderator, had this to say:

Poznan Climate Talks: fiddling while the earth burns

December 2008
Oscar Reyes
The UN Climate Conference in Poznan, Poland failed to achieve any breakthrough towards a global climate deal – a sign not merely of bad timing, but of a fundamentally flawed system that takes no account of climate justice.

Radical new agenda needed to achieve climate justice

December 2008
TNI
We will not be able to stop climate change if we don't change the neo-liberal and corporate-based economy which stops us from achieving sustainable societies, writes Climate Justice Now! alliance in the Poznan statement.

Members of Climate Justice Now! – a worldwide alliance of more than 160 organisations -- have been in Poznan for the past two weeks closely following developments in the UN climate negotiations.

This statement is our assessment of the Conference of Parties (COP) 14, and articulates our principles for achieving climate justice.

Corporate takeover at Poznan: some facts

December 2008
TNI
Climate Justice Now!
The UN Climate Conference in Poznan is systematically privileging business lobby groups over public interest organisations.

The UN Climate Conference in Poznan is systematically privileging business lobby groups over public interest organisations, according to members of the Climate Justice Now! Coalition.1 In addition, Indigenous Peoples´ representatives do not get formal access to the negotiations, despite the fact that they are amongst the most affected by climate change.

* Who is the biggest non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Poznan?

Clean Development Mechanism: dump it, don´t expand it

December 2008
TNI
The UN´s Clean Development Mechanism is beyond repair and should be dumped, climate justice campaigners told delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan today.

“The CDM is a ´lose-lose´ proposition that has become a corrupt and cheap way for the rich North to avoid making real emission reductions.

Offsets Under Kyoto: a dirty deal for the South

December 2008
TNI
Kevin Smith
Despite driving poor communities off their land and patently failing to deliver carbon emissions reductions, lobbyists for big industries and institutions such as the World Bank were active in Poznan climate negotiations pushing for further deregulation and expansion of the market-based Clean Development Mechanism.

In Western Panama, the Naso and Ngobe peoples are fighting against the construction of four hydroelectric dams being built on the land of Indigenous Peoples, saying that they will destroy their homelands.