Emissions Trading - Criticism

Criticism

Emissions trading has been criticised for a variety of reasons.

In the popular science magazine New Scientist, Lohmann (2006) argued that trading pollution allowances should be avoided as a climate change policy. Lohman gave several reasons for this view. First, global warming will require more radical change than the modest changes driven by previous pollution trading schemes such as the US SO₂ market. Global warming requires "nothing less than a reorganisation of society and technology that will leave most remaining fossil fuels safely underground." Carbon trading schemes have tended to reward the heaviest polluters with 'windfall profits' when they are granted enough carbon credits to match historic production. Carbon trading encourages business-as-usual as expensive long-term structural changes will not be made if there is a cheaper source of carbon credits. Cheap "offset" carbon credits are frequently available from the less developed countries, where they may be generated by local polluters at the expense of local communities.

Lohmann (2006b) supported conventional regulation, green taxes, and energy policies that are "justice-based" and "community-driven." According to Carbon Trade Watch (2009), carbon trading has had a "disastrous track record." The effectiveness of the EU ETS was criticized, and it was argued that the CDM had routinely favoured "environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects."

Annie Leonard provided a critical view on carbon emissions trading in her 2009 documentary The Story of Cap and Trade. This documentary emphasized three factors: unjust financial advantages to major pollutors resulting from free permits, an ineffectiveness of the system caused by cheating in connection with carbon offsets and a distraction from the search for other solutions.