By Mark DaCosta-In 2009, under the Presidency of Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana first launched the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). One key facet of the Jagdeo-conceived LCDS is the sale of carbon credits to foreign entities. In fact, it appears that the collection of revenue from the sale of those credits is the only aspect of the LCDS that is being vigorously pursued by the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime.
There have been no discernible actions by the PPP regime to reduce carbon emissions and place Guyana on a “green development trajectory.” In other words, it appears to be all about collecting money instead of actually mitigating climate change. There are many questions associated with this subject; one of the biggest is whether or not selling carbon credits have a mitigating effect on climate change.
Climate change on earth is caused by the greenhouse effect which occurs when energy from the sun passes through our atmosphere and heats our planet’s surface, but greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning to space, resulting in a warmer planet. In turn, greenhouse gases are produced by human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels to power machines or produce electricity.
Climate change was first alluded to in 1896. A paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the earth’s surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming. That warming has been observed and has accelerated since around 1981. Warming has resulted in drastic changes to ocean currents, extinction of some marine and land life, weather patterns and other harmful phenomena such as rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities.
It is known that trees lock away or sequester carbon thereby taking it out of the atmosphere. After many territories passed regulations to limit carbon emissions, and being perceived as “carbon neutral” became fashionable, the carbon market was born. Companies and territories could pay other people to plant or keep trees; Guyana got in on in the action with the LCDS. While keeping trees standing is good, there may be a problem. Many countries and companies are not reducing their carbon emissions, instead, they are buying carbon credits to offset those emissions. The question is, will this help to stop climate change? Many scientists say that the answer is no.
The fact is, countries, such as Guyana, that collect money to keep our forests, may have kept those forests anyway. So, nothing has changed. While big companies and rich countries continue to release carbon, the earth continues to heat up, but those rich countries get to claim that they are carbon neutral because they are paying territories such as Guyana millions of dollars to preserve forests. Is the carbon credit market just another global racket?
According to a report by the Forest Ecology Network (FEN), “In order to mitigate the impacts of global warming many experts believe that our greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. This reduction has no chance of being reached through a voluntary cap and [carbon credit] trade system utilising the free market system.” The FEN says, “The carbon trading system works by allowing carbon reducing industries [and territories] to accumulate credits which they can sell as carbon offsets to businesses which either voluntarily want to reduce emissions or whose regulator caps require emission reductions. The problem is that the polluting industries are NOT REDUCING THEIR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS!”
A report by Greenpeace states, “The big problem with offsets isn’t that what they offer is bad – tree planting or renewable energy and efficiency for poor communities are all good things – but rather that [offsets] don’t do what they say. They don’t actually cancel out – or, offset – the emissions to which they are linked.
“Offsetting projects simply don’t deliver what we need – a reduction in the carbon emissions entering the atmosphere. Instead, they’re a distraction from the real solutions to climate change. As a result, offsetting allows companies like BP and Shell as well as airlines to continue with their unsustainable behaviour while shifting their responsibility for the climate onto the consumer.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) wrote that, “offsetting is ‘greenwash,’ allowing companies to avoid cutting their emissions while still being able to claim they are, or will be, carbon neutral.”
The Greenpeace report says, “If we’re serious about tackling climate change, there is only one answer to the problem: these companies and industries need to put people and the planet over profit by completely overhauling their business models.”
The FEN report states, “What is needed is a global mandate with caps and targets – a market-driven voluntary system will not work. However, since the U.S and China (responsible for over 40% of the emissions) have not bought into mandatory caps and reduction targets, the potential for meaningful reductions is unrealistic.
“Why would other countries strongly enforce caps and targets on their emissions if it puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the market place? The fact is that if we are to save the planet from a devastating ecological meltdown, it is going to require an immediate, and we mean immediate, reduction in greenhouse gases.”
It appears there is scientific consensus that offsets by trading in carbon credits — without reduction of carbon emissions — will not mitigate climate change. In fact, following this line of thought to its bitter end, it would seem likely that the existence of a carbon credit market would encourage rich countries and territories to emit more carbon. After all, they would just have to pay countries such as Guyana a few million dollars to get away with it. Meanwhile politicians get richer, businesses get bigger, and more carbon is released and our planet’s destruction continues.
