posted by devonwhittle on Oct 1, 2006
What’s wrong with carbon credits?
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Just remembered this great article from the Social Ecology Institute on what’s wrong with carbon credits and trying to use the free market to control pollution. Even though it’s a few years old now, it’s still very relevant. Putting a price on pollution while hopefully leading to “polluters pay” and thus less pollution can often lead to “the payers pollute” - ie. just acting as a smoke screen for companies to pollute rather then clean up. I guess it just has to be done right to be effective.
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2 Comments, Comment or Ping
lantianer
As can be seen from the article linked to in the post, putting a price on pollution just encourages companies to view everything in terms of money, and to calculate the cost of harming the environment in purely financial terms, and weigh it against the cost of reducing that pollution.
I think that the “polluter pays” principle is fundamentally flawed. These examples just provide some evidence for what can go wrong; but the ultimate answer is found in the Bible. Market economics, such as this carbon credits system, is based on greed, which is sinful. Our creator put us in charge of his creation, to manage it and look after it on his behalf—that should be the basis for concern about greenhouse emissions, not the financial “bottom line”.
Oct 2nd, 2006
devonwhittle
In our Global Environmental Politics class it seems that “polluter pays” is all the rage - Ecological Modernisation loves it! It ignores all the intrinsic value stuff of nature, and like you said can encourage more greed through the market system.
That said, I’m not totally opposed to stuff like carbon trading and things like that, they can do some good - they just have to enacted properly, have proper standards and be tied in with heavy regulation. Like you said, Biblically, not everything has a price tag - our environmental laws should reflect this.
Oct 2nd, 2006
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