Summary
Current 'conventional wisdom' and programs to counter climate change cannot succeed. TTie author examines one policy in some detail: carbon trading, or "privatizing the atmospheric commons," and "creating a supermarket of pollution." Carbon and emissions trading programs were recommended by both the Kyoto Protocol and the influential 2006 Stern report on the devastating economic costs of climate change. Under the Protocol, industrial countries are awarded "property rights" to the atmosphere - and with them the right to pollute and to trade these rights. By 'investing' in a project in a developing country that reduces carbon emissions, the 'investor' in an industrialized country gets Certified Emission Reduction Units which can be used to meet its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By developing green abroad, corporations get credits that allow them to pollute at home." Under the Kyoto Protocol this is called a Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM. The result of this policy is to "create a market in pollution," says Dr. [Vandana Shiva], that is "ethically perverse," because basically the polluter gets paid, as slighdy cleaner companies profit by selling their pollution rights to dirtier ones. The really 'dean' producers, such as small farmers and traditional farming communities, do not even feature in the scheme.
The closing chapter offers a well-argued call for the de-industrialization of agriculture and "powering down" of fossil fuel use, with a parallel "powering up" of quality of life. The "re-localization of our food systems has become an ecological and social imperative," she writes. We must rely less on the expensive transport of produce over long distances. Industrial processing in a fossil fuel economy supported by the "ultimate subsidy" (of) militarized support for the extraction of fossil fuels" - must be scaled back. If it is tapped, says Vandana Shiva, the largest energy source we have "is the internal energy of human beingp in all its dimensions -spiritual, cultural, emotional, intellectual, physical."She calls on us to see "the biodiversity economy" as "the sustainable alternative to the fossil fuel economy," one that will "make a transition to an age beyond oil." A "carbon democracy" values and shares the "useful carbon" related to the natural growth cycles of the earth, its pknt and animal life. '? bottom-up search for sustainability creates an Earth Democracy based on living economies."See the full content of this document
Extract
Citizens of an Earth Democracy
If you haven't heard the well-known Indian nuclear-physicist-turned activist Vandana Shiva speak recently, then please read this book. If you have heard her, then read it anyway, for in more detail than a single speech can ever give, you'll find a presentation of facts, experience, and connections addressing the triple crises of climate, energy, and food. This book is a resource to help readers understand ...
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