Hi All

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/05/friends-of-the-eart...

has a story about the dismal failure but high profitability of the $126
billion carbon trading market.

Stephen

--
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design
School of Engineering and Electronics
University of Edinburgh
Mayfield Road
Edinburgh EH9 3JL
Scotland
tel +44 131 650 5704
fax +44 131 650 5702
Mobile  07795 203 195
S.Sal...@ed.ac.uk
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs    

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

We must continuously emphasize the problem is that we are NOT properly
carbon trading.   We are trading some (but not all) emissions.   There
are many exceptions.   The carbon offset market is a dangerous market.  
The fallacy of a market in offsets was exposed by Martin Luther seral
centuries ago when he objected to the Pope selling indulgencies to keep
people out of sin.

Whatever we agree to as a compromise to try to get something happening,
we must always base it on fundamentals.
It is not carbon emissions that cause global warming.  It is carbon
concentrations.
When there is not a clear, simple, and definite procedure, it will be
the biggest polluters who use their power to get exceptions
In the US we have before the House a pork barrel bill with a slight
veneer of climate change.    Some experts such as Jim Hansen think that
it is dangerious and that it should be abandoned and start again

But I urge all academics who are involved in this business
Always start with the fundmentals in any discussion that will be seen by
the uneducated public (that means everyone but you)
NEVER let an opportunity pass to chide someone on letting the big guys
get way with it.

Let us start with Scotland.   particularly Edinburgh which is thwe
caoital and go on to Glagow which has the capital and also the memory of
William Thompson , Lord kelvin, who would be horrified at what is happening.

Dick WILSON
Department of Physics
Harvard University
(who remembers the cold nights of coal rationing in 1947...)

On 11/5/2009 1:07 PM, Stephen Salter wrote:

just on a point of fact, indulgences werent meant to stop you from sinning.
They allowed you to carry on sinning and still get to heaven without having
to spend the penance time in purgatory.

-which makes it an even better parallel!!

john gorman
cradle and practising catholic -incidently

I accept John's correction and bow to his superior knowledge!

Dick Wilson

A needed counterpoint here...

The concept of indulgences is a good analogy for the voluntary carbon
market-- but remember, the voluntary market is only 1/100 of the
regulated market in volume-- and no one argues that the voluntary
market will address the problem.  In a sense its more like society's
sandbox for the concept of addressing our collective footprint.
Training wheels maybe.

In every regulated market, offsets are capped at between 5-15% of
overall volume, which is built in at the beginning.  The concept is to
fund reductions outside capped sectors.  Without offsets, those
reductions don't get funded.  Because the offset volume is set at the
outset, the overall balance between capped and uncapped sectors is a
question of design and how high to set the "pain" threshold.  You
could argue that pain should be set higher, that more sectors should
be capped, or that allowances should be set lower-- but the question
is how high to set the pain.  i.e. 20% by 2020 or 40% by 2020.  This
is really where the rubber meets the road-- not in whether offsets are
used or not.

Now you can fault the market approach for many things-- for corruption
which leads to overallocation by govt officials, for projects which
fail additionality, etc. etc.  You could make the case that those
flaws are bumps in the road that will get addressed (the first 5 years
of the Nox and Sox emissions trading markets in the late 80s faced
similar challenges) or you could assert that they won't.  You could
provide evidence that things are improving in terms of project quality
(via the emergence of tools like carbonflow that provide tremendous
transparency for verifiers and other market professionals), or you
could provide evidence that they're not (china is still getting paid
to do things that they'd probably do anyway).  You could argue that
carbon taxes would be better (less opportunity for corruption--outside
the govt that is, govt corruption will still be an issue, and the
inefficiency of allocating tax revenues), or that they won't (because
there's no target cap to shoot for-- you don't know if you're
succeeding, govt allocation of tax revenues will be inefficient and
might not go to reward investment in efficiencies or carbon
reductions, and how do we really monitor china's internal enforcement
of a tax structure anyway, etc)

But just to point to offsets and say they're indulgences and allow you
to "keep on sinning" is probably a bit oversimplified, no?

w/ respect to the voluntary market--- an indulgence truly resulted in
no net change between the sinning person and the non-sinner... (though
one could argue that admission is the first step to rehabilitation).
At least with the (voluntary) carbon offset, the person is attempting
to remove carbon from the atmosphere-- if the project they invest in
is an additional one, then they've made an actual difference.  In
casual conversation I had w/ Eric Blachford, CEO of Terrapass last
year, he said the most searched for car type was "prius" (as opposed
to say, "hummer").  So... it seems that at least at a glance, the
people who are trying to mop up the last bit of their emissions are
also the ones most likely to be doing the most to reduce them
initially as well.  Seems intuitively correct as well... if you buy
intuition.

I'm not arguing that the carbon market is the answer, but it would be
nice to see the debate elevated here a little.

If you want to read an excellent paper on the subject, here is David
Victor and Michael Wara's piece.  They argue for reform and additional
mechanisms to compliment offsets.  They really hit all the right
notes.

http://pesd.stanford.edu/publications/a_realistic_policy_on_internati...

My. .02.

D

On Nov 5, 11:42 pm, "John Gorman" <gorm...@waitrose.com> wrote:

On Nov 6, 4:07 am, Stephen Salter <S.Sal...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:

If you look closely you can see the USA has effective ownership of the
UN carbon trading  push in Copenhagen , it is a SCAM and has
horrifying  future bondage for every man woman and child on earth for
ever at the mercy of the USA who can set the amount we MUST pay to
emit carbon

Carbon trading is exactly like the British Salt taxes , and will
enslave every person on earth forever , forced to pay whatever the USA
chooses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India...

One of the strongest criticisms of the World Bank has been the way in
which it is governed. While the World Bank represents 184 countries,
it is run by a small number of economically powerful countries. These
countries choose the leadership and senior management of the World
Bank and as such, their interests are dominant within the bank.[23]

It has also been suggested that the World Bank is an instrument for
the promotion of US or Western interests in certain regions of the
world. .[29]

Criticisms of the structure of the World Bank refer to the fact that
the President of the Bank is always a citizen of the United States,
nominated by the President of the United States (though subject to the
approval of the other member countries).

There have been accusations that the decision-making structure is
undemocratic, as the US effectively has a veto on some constitutional
decisions with just over 16% of the shares in the bank;[30] moreover,
decisions can only be passed with votes from countries whose shares
total more than 85% of the bank's shares.[31]

as the USA owns 16% of the shares in the world Bank and it needs over
85% to over turn a decision ,

AND the USA has the right to choose its leader

CLEARLY the World Bank is completely under FULL control of the USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank
Clean Technology Fund management

The World Bank has been assigned temporary management responsibility
of the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), focused on making renewable energy
cost-competitive with coal-fired power as quickly as possible, but
this may not continue after UN's Copenhagen climate change conference
in December, 2009, because of the Bank's continued investment in coal-
fired power plants.[18]

 In the 1990s the World Bank and the IMF forged the Washington
Consensus, a set of policies which included deregulation and
liberalization of markets, privatization and the downscaling of
government.

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