http://www.commondreams.org/views/111600-103.htm
Published on Thursday,
November 16, 2000 in the Guardian of London
The Great Climate Sell-Off
by George Monbiot
The privatisation of Britain's air traffic control systems
is rather like the Millennium Dome. First the government
backs it, then it tries to figure out what on earth it is for.
Ministers' attempts to explain the inexplicable have not been
helped by an unequivocal promise the Labour party made in
opposition: "Our skies," it announced, "are not
for sale."
The government is clearly
trying to beat its own egregious
record, for in one week it is planning to break this promise
not once, but twice. It is currently trying to sell not only
our flight paths, but also the sky itself. The world's weather
is on the brink of being privatised.
The original purpose
of the climate change negotiations
taking place in the Hague this week was to cut the amount
of greenhouse gases the world produces, in order to avert
more catastrophic weather of the kind Britain has suffered
over the past few weeks. But corporations have discovered
in the world's disasters a marvellous opportunity for making
money. Thanks to their lobbying, the climate saving talks
have been turned into a surreal discussion about how the
atmosphere can be bought and sold.
Under the Kyoto protocol
on climate change, countries are
allowed to reduce their emissions through something called
"flexibility mechanisms". Instead of cutting carbon
dioxide
at home, they can either buy "carbon credits" from countries
which have exceeded their own targets for cuts, or invest
in carbon-reducing technologies elsewhere in the world.
At first sight, this looks like a fine idea. It places
a financial premium on cleanliness, and encourages the
transfer of environmentally-friendly technology to the
developing world. In practice, it promises to exacerbate
both climate change and inequality.
Flexibility mechanisms
could enable countries to trade
in hot air. A nation's entitlement to pollute depends
upon how much carbon dioxide it was producing in 1990.
Since then, heavy industry in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan
has all but collapsed, with the result that they have
accidentally achieved far greater carbon cuts than anticipated.
The United States is hoping to avoid cutting its own emissions
by buying unused entitlements from these countries, thus
making no net contribution to carbon reduction.
The UK wants to engage
in a similar scam, by selling the
carbon dioxide we would have produced if we hadn't shut
the coal mines. The government has also offered state aid
for the privatisation of the climate. In July it laid
down £30m to help private companies start bidding for
each other's reduced emissions. A research institute
in the United States calculates that the weather market
will be worth $13 trillion by 2050.
But the subtler plans
are still more hazardous. As a new
report by the Corporate Europe Observatory shows, they
amount to subsidies for northern corporations seeking
to exploit developing countries. The British government
is insisting, for example, that if BNFL builds nuclear
power stations in China it should be able to obtain a
carbon discount for the UK, on the basis that they will
emit less greenhouse gas than coal-burning plants.
The discount could be used to subsidise their construction,
thus saving a dangerous technology from extinction.
Monsanto is hoping
to find new markets for its unpopular
herbicide-tolerant crops by promoting them as "carbon friendly",
on the basis that they leave more organic matter in the soil
than conventional crops (though far less, of course, than
organic farming). A Malaysian logging company is already
selling pollution permits to an electricity firm in the US,
claiming, in the looking-glass world of carbon trading,
that it is sucking carbon out of the atmosphere by replacing
the virgin forests it is cutting with plantations.
Such schemes not only
finance environmental destruction;
they are also grossly unjust. If first world countries
can buy their way out of their commitments by funding
carbon-saving projects in the third world, then developing
nations will have trouble making reductions of their own,
when, in the future, such cuts are demanded of them.
Indeed, when the amount
of carbon dioxide a country or
a company generates is used to determine how much
it should be allowed to produce, then the worst polluters
acquire the greatest rights. The greater your right
to pollute, the more carbon credits you can sell to
other people. Those least responsible for the problem,
in other words, benefit least from the solution.
The polluters meeting
in the Hague this week claim that
they are saving the planet. In truth they are selling it.
© Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2000
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