Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Even the Pope gets it: carbon markets won’t fix the climate

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Even the Pope gets it: carbon markets won’t fix the climate

Click here to access article by Gareth Bryant from Progress in Political Economy.

The author provides more evidence that the carbon market scheme functions as a public relations gimmick to disguise corporate pollution, and even allows corporations to profit from it.

Carbon markets are in fact designed to seek out cheap emissions reductions...over fundamental structural changes to energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards renewables. Researchers and activists have linked this profit-driven logic to the creative accounting, financial fraud, phantom emissions reductions and polluter subsidies that have riddled carbon markets, arguing they cannot be reformed and should be scrapped.

And he is not optimistic about the upcoming talks in Paris scheduled to begin on Nov. 30th.

As we approach the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris, carbon markets just won’t go away – even despite the fact market solutions actively hinder our ability to make serious emissions cuts.