by Paul Baer
As some of you who read this already know, a long-simmering debate over carbon trading has burst into roaring flames on this blog. For those of you who find interest in this matter, and want to see some (sometimes painfully) uncensored opinions, please look at Tom’s posting “Cloud Cuckoo Land” and the comments thereto.
The long and short of it is that EcoEquity has long been a supporter of (certain types of) carbon trading, in opposition to the views of many non-CAN-affiliated persons and organizations. A recent summary of our position can be found in the article “Where We Stand.”
Tom’s aforementioned posting listed the so-called “Climate Justice radicals” as one of those groups that was in “cloud cuckoo land,” focusing (in their case) on their opposition to trading and the “Kyoto process.” For better or worse, of all the people/institutions who got that award (which, for different reasons, also included Andy Revkin of the NYTimes and the Italian environment minister, among others), only Adam Ma’anit of Carbon Trade Watch took us seriously enough to respond. And while the exhange has had a certain amount of unfortunate ad hominem, a lot of the crucial issues have nonetheless been raised.
Although Tom has primarily spoken for us on this issue, I am equally responsible for our position. So I’d like to put forward some of my own thoughts on the issue, and make more explicit some of the questions that I think are at the heart of this debate.
A meta-theme of this debate, which I want to raise at the beginning, is the extent to which “ideology” is influencing our perceptions. It’s a truism that one reads evidence on the basis of one's beliefs; the important question is whether one is willing to consider alternative lines of reasoning that include alternative premises at multiple levels, including those that might be called “ideological.” It is worth coming back to this question eventually. But my main goal here is to lay out what I think are the underlying questions.
One key question is, what do we imagine are the “acceptable” emissions pathways? Tom and I are convinced that we need sharp and rapid reductions, about which (in general terms) there is probably very little dispute in this group. But our opinions about the quantitative details may differ, and this may make some difference to strategies.
A second key question is, what broad “storylines” do we believe may deliver the kinds of emissions reductions that we believe are necessary? Put differently, what is our vision of a society that “achieves” climate justice, and the pathway to that society? Some of what we believe is outlined in our book “Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming”; in our recent writings we’ve started referring to a “global new deal.” We have yet to flesh this concept outline in policy detail, but it implies a new North/South compromise that goes beyond the climate regime.
A third question is, what are the political strategies and tactics that we believe promote our medium to long-term goals? Again, to state the obvious, EcoEquity believes that the Kyoto process offers the best hope for the future. Explaining why we believe this will require us to engage in some detail with the points that Adam, Michael and Larry have raised. Tom has (or will) begin to engage those points; I will defer a more detailed responsed until tomorrow at least.
These are just a few of the mains answers to these questions that Tom and I work with (our “working hypotheses”) as it were, and again, it is clear that those answers are different among the readers (and posters) on this list. But what counts as an answer depends on a variety of additional assumptions about how the world does, or can, work, and it may be among these less obvious premises that the disagreement arises.
My hope is that among the people who are already participating in this discussion, and whomever else finds it worth their time, we can make a careful exposition of the full set of premises that underly our choices of strategy and tactics.
I will admit up front that, if I were a betting man, I’d bet that the Kyoto process won’t deliver what we currently believe to be a suitably precautionary trajectory (consistent with 400 ppm CO2-e by the end of the century). At the heart of our embrace of the process, however, is a belief that there is not an alternative strategy that has a better likelihood of doing so. I believe that this is the fundamental disagreement between us and the “climate justice radicals.” But, not having explored the questions of long-term vision, it’s not obvious that the disagreement isn’t about endpoint rather than pathway.
Central to our strategy and tactics is the conclusion that a precautionary climate pathway will depend on Northern money paying for decarbonization in the South. This is a scary thought, as there is little good precedent for such “investment” being anything but destructive. But given the scarcity of the remaining carbon budget, either the North will pay for decarbonization, or it won’t happen - at least, we think it won’t.
I suspect that there is unlikely to be a great deal of change in the short run of anyone’s opinion in this discussion. But I hope we will all take part with the idea that it is possible our opinions could change. None of us are stupid to believe what we do; all of us have formed our opinions out of long years of experience.
There is much more that I would like to say, but this is not my day job, so I’m going to pause with this. I look forward both to commenting more specifically on the postings to date, and to reading additional contributions.
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