On Apr 17, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
> Big oil companies, in particular, can win property rights to
> pollute at
> the level they always have, instead of facing up to their historic
> debt
> to the Third World for using it as dumping ground.
That's not entirely accurate - and I'm no fan of cap-and-trade, either. The are two parts to cap-and-trade systems, as the name suggests - the capping part and the trading part. The caps are supposed to decline over time. So oil companies and other polluters are not going to be free to pollute at the level they always have.
And once again, in this passage you elide the differences between c&t and carbon offsets. They're not in contradiction, but they're not the same either.
There are a lot of problems with c&t - extreme volatility of permit prices and intense administrative difficulties. But it's not fair to deny that proponents aim to see the level of emissions decline over time.
And I heard Nicholas Stern speak at Columbia less than a week ago - if and when I get the audio I'll run excerpts on the radio. He spoke at some length about equity issues, and said that the burden of emission reduction had to fall on the rich countries. Your excerpt here seems to deny that. Stern also professed not to be opposed to carbon taxes, or fixated on c&t; in fact, he said a variety of approaches is needed. He is fixated on carbon sequestration, which seems loony; where would one store 27 gigatons of carbon every year?
The Stern Gang's goals are too modest, their time-scale too leisurely, and their policy instruments often dodgy, but you should represent their proposals accurately.
Doug