Hullo all, I'm struggling with something to do with carbon markets, and wondered if anyone can help me out - I've been trying to get my head round the following paragraph in the intro to Steffen Böhm and Siddhartha Dabhi's (excellent) Upsetting the Offset (which can be downloaded free here: http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=194). Böhm and Dabhi write that:
There comes a stage when climate change will be irreversible; hence drastic action is needed now. Instead, what we are seeing is carbon market speculation. Take, for example, HFC-23, one of the most potent GHG, which is equivalent to 11,700 tons of CO2. Precisely because of this extraordinarily high CO2 equivalent, and the associated high earning potential associated with it, it is now feared that new HFC-23 production facilities are being set up in places like China only to profit from the sale of CERs. That is, rather than ‘efficiently’ reducing the production of this highly potent GHG, the newly created carbon markets have introduced a perverse incentive to produce and emit even more GHG. Could anyone gently explain to me how that works, then? Offlist might be better for my self-respect. Thanks, and happy trading, Graeme Dr Graeme Hayes Director of French Studies Co-editor, Social Movement Studies Aston University UK http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/hayesg/ ________________________________________
