economics of carbon

There is consensus that climate change is the single largest threat to global economy. Effective methods to tackle the growing effects of global warming are yet to be devised. However, there has been several measures to quantify carbon emission. Both the Kyoto Protocol and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) are based on the pollution trading model. By giving greenhouse gases a price, trading is also supposed to encourage businesses to invent new, lower-emitting technologies. One problem is that carbon trading encourages the industries most addicted to coal, oil and gas to delay shifting away from fossil fuels.

Critiques of the Carbon Economy
One of the oft-heard complaint is that they encourage ‘passing the buck’, rather than alleviating the situation. They have also been repeatedly critiqued for merely salving consciences; for privatizing the public or societal cost of carbon pollution; for, in the case of some projects, dispossessing ordinary people of their land and water. Global warming requires reorganization of society and technology so that fossil fuels can be left in the ground. It is a false economy to try to set up a market system that requires enormously complicated, centralized carbon accounting merely in order to save corporations a bit of money in attaining unambitious, near-term targets. Time and brainpower would be better spent in laying enduring foundations for an entirely new regime of energy use.

Carbon Trade Schemers
Carbon trading schemes are based on the ‘polluter pays’ principle. However, high-polluting industries and nations are being granted nearly as many free pollution rights - which they can then trade lucratively - as they need to cover their current emissions. Under the EU ETS, some of the worst greenhouse offenders have garnered hundreds of millions of pounds in windfall profits for pursuing business as usual, while ordinary citizens suffer higher electricity prices and developers of renewable energy go begging.

The Kyoto Protocol and the EU ETS are weakened further by loopholes allowing big polluters to buy cheap 'offset' credits from abroad to 'compensate' for any emissions not covered by free pollution permits. A British cement firm or oil company lacking enough permits to cover its emissions can make up the shortfall simply by buying credits from, say, a 'carbon-saving' wind farm in India, a scheme to destroy globe-warming HFC refrigerants in Korea, an energy efficiency programme in South Africa, or a project to burn landfill gas to generate electricity in Brazil.

The domestic inaction that this arrangement enables might be justified if it were part of a larger revolution in the way energy is used and produced worldwide. But it isn't. The foreign carbon projects being used to license industry's continued emissions at home are supplementing fossil fuel use; they are not replacing it. The institutions most active in setting up 'offset' projects - ranging from the World Bank to Tokyo Power - are precisely those most committed to burning up more and more coal, oil and gas. The logical endpoint of this approach is a landscape covered in the carcasses of wind farms, solar stations and biofuel plantations - all baking in a greenhouse atmosphere that can no longer support human civilization.

Many ordinary people in the South have more immediate concerns about carbon trading. The Durban Group for Climate Justice documented how carbon credits are being generated almost exclusively by local environmental offenders, while communities preserving local forests or defending their lands against oil exploitation or coal-fired power plants are being ignored. It is big polluters, after all, who tend to be in the best position to hire carbon consultants, liaise with officials and pay money to get projects registered with the UN carbon market.

In Brazil, locals are up in arms against a land-grabbing plantation and pig iron firm that tried to peddle credits on the ground that without the carbon money it would have to replace its charcoal fuel with mineral coal. In India, the notoriously polluting, water-guzzling sponge iron industry of Chhattisgarh was among the first to try to sell carbon credits for being 'green'. Worldwide, many communities interviewed had no idea that their local corporate bad citizens were getting extra cash from the carbon market - but were not happy to hear it.

The carbon market helps keep an oppressive fossil-centered industrial model going at a time when society should already be abandoning it. There are better ways of tackling climate change than by privatizing the earth's carbon-cycling capacity. Public investment; shifting subsidies away from fossil fuels toward renewables; conventional regulation; support for the work of communities already following or pioneering low-carbon ways of life - all are more direct ways of bringing about structural change.

The US wrote carbon trading into the Kyoto Protocol before abandoning the treaty to its fate. With the advent of Copenhagen, there is an increased need to reform the basis on which any future carbon schemes are based upon. The sclerotic market apparatus that came about after Kyoto does not serve the best interests of either South or North. The Northern bloc cannot continue polluting and expect the Southern bloc to pay – the impacts are disproportionate. A lot of time has been wasted that is not available to waste discussing a model that is essentially a failure. It had more than a decade to work and it didn’t, it is time for a change.

why carbon sinks?

Everybody is talking about reduction of green house gases and carbon-cuts. What a lot of people don't realise is that even if carbon amounts in the atmosphere are reduced today, the effects of current levels of carbon already present is going to be felt for atleast 100 years - this is how long it takes for carbon to dissipate. In other words: even if we reduce carbon emissions now, the carbon already present can contribute to global warming.

This realization is the reason why there is a current scramble for carbon sequestration technologies. The idea behind this is to capture carbon and then bury it under the earth, in the sea-bed or to come up with a method where the conversion of carbon is accelerated.

Currently forests have been acting as a great 'carbon sink' whereby carbon is naturally captured. However due to global warming there have been speculations that forests could release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than to slow it down. While deforestation is responsible for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, forests currently absorb more carbon than they emit.

But the problem is that the balance could shift as the planet warms, the report concludes, and the sequestration service provided by the forest biomes could be lost entirely if the Earth heats up by 2.5C or more. Droughts, more pest invasions, and other environmental stresses would trigger considerable forest destruction and degradation. This could create a dangerous feedback loop, it adds, in which damage to forests from climate change would increase global carbon emissions that then exacerbate global warming.

The other biggest natural carbon sink are the oceans of the world which are already showing stress due to acidification because of excess carbon. Plankton in the ocean also act as a carbon sink and they will slowly die as the oceans become more acidic and warm up. The other big carbon sink is the permafrost which is said to contain large amounts of methane. Global warming will cause it to melt which will release all the methane which is more potent than CO2 as a GHG.

The need for reducing carbon emissions as well as to reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere is pressing. So there is a twin objective to be met in order to combact enhanced global warming. Does this make it harder to reach our objectives? Perhaps. But it also impresses upon us the incredible delicacy of the Earth's natural regulating systems.

climate change and waste management

One of the greatest challenges facing the modern world today is climate change. Apart from the obvious consequences like floods, droughts etc., climate change is the single most important factor affecting global economy. Among the things that can alleviate climate change, one of the most important is waste management.

Waste management has at least five types of impacts on climate change, attributable to:

• landfill methane emissions
• reduction in industrial energy use and emissions due to recycling and waste reduction
• energy recovery from waste
• carbon sequestration in forests due to decreased demand for virgin paper
• energy used in long-distance transport of waste
  

It is arguable to say therefore, that reducing wastes reduces GHG emissions which are the causative agents of the global warming which causes climate change. Recycling of wastes not only reduces landfill space but also reduces energy consumption during the production of virgin material and energy used for incineration and disposal of wastes. It also forces manufacturers to take a closer look at the production process and employing philosophies like TQM which not only reduces wastes but also increases productivity throughout the production line. Carrying out life cycle assessments is another way to tackle the growing problem of wastes.

Modern landfills which accept biodegradable wastes are engineered to capture the gases produced. About 42% of renewable gas and electricity now comes from landfill gas in Great Britain. Burning the methane collected in this manner releases CO2 into the atmosphere which is less harmful and as it is derived from biomass, it does not count towards the national average emissions.

When products are recycled and reduced, industrial consumption of energy decreases as a result because they are not starting a virgin production cycle. Reduction of paper wastes saves trees from being cut down thereby saving forests. Paper is biodegradable because it is made of a natural substance, but it can also be recycled and reused thereby decreasing the amount of trees felled. Transporting, compacting and sorting of wastes uses up tremendous amounts of energy which contribute to the global energy demand and release of GHG into the atmosphere. Waste management therefore, is a global issue. An example to prove the point - plastic bags from UK are transported to China to be recycled and transported back. This leaves a huge carbon footprint due to transportation of goods over 10,000 miles . As 17 billion plastic bags a year are handed out to British shoppers, this generates a huge amount of wastes. When plastic bags are not disposed of properly, they not only take many years to biodegrade but also leach into the soil to contaminate ground water supplies and cause many detrimental affects to wildlife. This situation also throws into light how something as seemingly simple as a plastic carrier bag can cause global problems. Declining a plastic bag is something that every one of us can do as plastic carrier bags are easily reusable.

Using natural materials can help to alleviate the hazards of landfill gases but this in turn puts biodiversity at risk. The issue of tackling wastes therefore is not an easy problem. It has varying dynamics and it requires a balanced decision making approach. Every individual can do their bit to tackle the issue of wastes by taking simple measures to choose products with less packaging material, declining plastic bags etc. Waste management should become a personal decision making factor for every one of us especially when it comes to choosing the products we buy and how we manage domestic waste. Since this is so intricately tied into other bigger, global problems, there is an opportunity within the waste management framework to alleviate some of those problems as well. Waste management ultimately is tied into the three golden Rs of sustainability - reduce, reuse, recycle.

Waste management forms one of the corner-stones of tackling the looming consequences of climate change and global warming. The effects of climate change are already being felt in many parts of the world and if current trends continue, the problems associated with enhanced global warming are only going to accelerate.