Carbon Trading : Ownership, Accumulation, Political Conflict ATTAC Orebro 10 March 2007

2. Carbon Trading: Ownership, Accumulation, Political Conflict ATTAC Orebro 10 March 2007

8. The earth has the capacity to handle the equivalent of 5 cubic kilometres of graphite being released to the air each decade. • But in fact the equivalent of 28 cubic kilometres of graphite are going into the air every decade.

9. Q. What role is carbon trading supposed to play in managing the overflow (= scarcity of dump space)?

11. A. It is supposed to find the cheapest way of using less of it (= the cheapest way of cutting emissions or achieving a numerical target imposed by state regulation).

12. Q. What is being bought and sold in the “carbon market”?

13. A.The earth’s carbon-cycling capacity = carbon “dumps” in oceans, air, vegetation, soil, etc.

14. Q. And how does the market make the use of this scarce good “more efficient”?

15. Carbon trading’s two aspects • Emissions trading (“cap and trade”) • Trading in carbon credits from “offsets” or special “carbon-saving” projects

16. Emissions Trading

17. Q. Governments say that this is “just an instrument”, “just a tool” to make climate action cheaper? True?

18. A. Not quite, because it means governments have to create • Private property, which they then have to make • Scarce, and do the • Arithmetic needed to make exchange possible.

19. Quasi-Privatization of Existing Global Carbon Dump by the UK Proposed National Allocation under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, 2005

20. The big six UK electricity generators are getting around US$1.2 billion per year in windfall profits from the EU ETS. • Metals manufacturers threaten to stomp out of Germany over having to pay for the EU pollution allowances German utilities got from their government for free.

21.  corporations encouraged to lobby for overallocations and to (mis)interpret “competitiveness” as requiring overallocation

22. Offset

23. +

24. Q. Governments say that this is “just an instrument”, “just a tool” to make climate action cheaper? True?

32. Closure orders were slapped on several of these plants for pollution violations in December 2006. • Similar plants in Karnataka have already-registered CDM projects that are described by even an ex-member of the CDM Methodological Panel as blatantly business as usual.

41. CARBON POOLS (billion tonnes) Atmosphere 720-760 Oceans 38,400-40,000 Rock >75,000,000 Land biosphere living biomass 600-1,000 dead biomass 1,200 Fresh water 1-2 Fossil fuels >4,130 coal 3,510 oil 230 gas 140 other 250

42. Fossil Fuels: Oil Coal Gas Oceans Forests, Soil, other Vegetation Fossil Carbon Pool: Carbon is locked away and does naturally not come in contact with the atmosphere Fossil carbon is stored permanently in coal, oil and gas UNLESS humans mine coal, extract oil & gas Once released, it will not move back into the fossil carbon pool for millennia – the time it takes for fossil carbon to be created Active Carbon Pool: Carbon is always moving between the forests, atmosphere and oceans The overall amount in all three carbon stores together does not increase

43. Atmosphere Fossil Fuels Fossil Carbon: Oceans Forests, |Soil, other vegetation Active Carbon: Fallacy of Kyoto Protocol carbon accounting: 1t active carbon = 1t fossil carbon Temporary Storage = Permanent Release

44. Where carbon is stored Atmosphere Oceans Forests, other Vegetation, Soil Active Carbon Pool Fossil Fuel Oil Gas Coal Fossil Carbon Pool

47. Plantar carbon project, Minas Gerais • Part of the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) • Carbon credits will finance expansion of already vast eucalyptus plantations by another 23,100ha • After approx. 7 years trees will be cut to make charcoal – produce pig iron – make steel – manufacture cars – allow more CO2 in the atmosphere

48. Charcoal

49. “The eucalyptus planted over here is meant for charcoal. It is a disaster for us. They say it provides jobs, but the maximum is 600 work places in a plantation of 35,000 hectares. And, when everything has been planted, one has to wait for six years. So, what work does it generate?”

50. Jorge, former Plantar worker: “When I started working at Plantar I was OK. One day I fainted after lunch. I was already applying the insecticides, fungicides. Then there were headaches, weakness. My superior told me, ‘I am firing you because you do not know if you are sick or not.’ Six or seven people died. Plantar said it was heart failure. Now I don’t dare eat the fish from the streams here.”