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Cap & Trade: A Critical Look at Carbon Trading from Democracy Now!

Filmed live in Copenhagen on Dec 15, a segment on cap and trade from Democracy Now! Featuring clips from The Story of Cap & Trade and a debate with Larry Lohmann and Fracnk Ackerman.

Larry Lohmann is author of the book “Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power”.  He works at the British NGO The Corner House.

Frank Ackerman is an economist at the Stockholm Environment Institute and author of “Can We Afford the Future?: The Economics of a Warming World”.

posted by Christina M. Samala
December 16, 2009
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  • Joe

    Saw this show. It turned me on to your project and I have researched some more on what you are doing in the fight for sustainability. Your project is a turning point in communicating this idea to the public. This is the issue that the world’s resources and top minds should be dedicated to solving. Keep up the good work! I will continue to follow and support the project in any way I can. Thank you!

  • Raj Mathur

    An amazing presentation style (simplicity, graphical) and great content. I would like to suggest adding the ‘state of our present financial system & its implications’ which needs to be known by all:
    Financial system [monetary policies, role of FED, meaning of money, role of banks etc.], these sites can help getting started:
    http://www.moneyasdebt.net
    http://www.chomsky.info
    http://www.johnperkins.org

    Thanks

  • Carl Chenery

    Hi Annie & Team,

    I support Raj’s suggestion about a future video on the monetary system would be a huge contribution.
    Other resources include:
    http://www.iousathemovie.com/

    Thanks for your work,

    Cheers,

    Carl

  • Gary

    How about you take a close look at the actual climate science… You’d fairly quickly find that the case for global warming is sketchy to start with…

    If you can draw a parallel between Cap and Trade and Enron’s energy trading schemes, why not investigate the possibility that the whole thing is cooked up… And that it’s distracting us from the real ecological disasters going on around us…

  • Gary Miller

    No relation to the previous commentor Gary, I have to say I’m fed up with these “global warming isn’t happening” comments. Any fool can see that it is and the science is as clear as science gets. If you seriously doubt global warming is happening then you must have a real problem with this earth actually being round when it looks so flat :-)

  • Anonymous

    Will the expansion of carbon emissions trading help stop global warming or just create a new market for Wall Street to make billions?

  • Dan Conine

    “the Senate is currently considering a House-passed cap-and-trade bill, and that the stakes include trillions of dollars”

    We talk a lot of environmental sustainability, but the subject of money always seems to be the issue. We have to get people to understand that money is a recent invention, and it is as destructive as fossil fuels. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to sell fish and the oceans boil with propellers.”
    If we are not going to eschew monetary decision making as a species, then we need a monetary feedback mechanism on ALL retail transactions (www.fairtax.org and then raise the rate until the water and air are clean).
    The concept of Cap and Trade is narrow and almost useless in that ALL resources should be considered important to the future, not just fossil fuels. If someone succeeds in development of cold fusion, are we then going to go through this all again to set up Cap and Trade on palladium? How about on copper or arsenic or lead? IT’s the whole idea that we can purchase things without paying the real costs WHEN WE MAKE THE DECISION that gets our species into trouble. Cap and Trade, like income taxes, allows our conscience to be deferred to somewhere or somewhen or someone else.

  • http://www.rallydev.com/agileblog Ryan Martens

    Dan,
    I agree with your argument on trying to get the overall set of prices “right” with a something that looks like fairtax.org. However, getting that past in our divided congress seems impossible. I am with Fred on the video. No way to pass a Carbon Tax, so it seems we have to pass a Cap and Trade bill to get any forward progress now. Again following Fred, we will have to patch the holes in Cap and Trade.

    I see Annie message around the holes in Cap and Trade. But, I feel like we need to keep taking incremental and iterative steps toward sustainability and ultimately toward restorative economies. In my world lots of small iterative steps have proved much better strategy than waiting or planning for the ultimate big bang. Given the current times, I really hope we take a step. This is getting pretty scary and no action would be a huge downer.

  • bradstyris@gmail.com

    More money for those that used money that advanced and enhanced the despoiling of the planet in the first place.It turned me on to your project and I have researched some more on what you are doing in the fight for sustainability. Your project is a turning point in communicating this idea to the public. This is the issue that the world’s resources and top minds should be dedicated to solving. Keep up the good work! I will continue to follow and support the project in any way I can.

  • Anonymous

    Good Comments. I agree with your point. Regards, seo

  • Maurice

    To Gary,

    The Science of Global Warming is NOT clear. It is very muddy.

    How can we in all honesty make a global weather model 50-100 years out, if we are barely able to predict the weather 24hours in advance?

    There are 3 parties (and 2 of them scream the loudest)
    1) The ones who say there is (going to be) global warming.
    2) The ones who say it is a hoax.
    3) The ones who honestly say ‘we don’t know’

    Guess who is the biggest and quietest? If you guessed group #3, your right.

    The way for universities and other research groups to get funding is to find a hot item. Global warming is one of those hot items.
    For example, if someone wants to study the frog population in the Florida swamps, he would not get any money. However. If (s)he formulates it differently:
    “The impact of global warming on the frog population in the Florida swamps”; they can suddenly tap into the funds allocated for global warming.

    You have to look at the bigger picture. The fact that there is so much money involved STINKS to high heaven.

    Secondly, data is easily manipulated, even climate data. Actually – ESPECIALLY climate data.

    This planet will ALWAYS have temperature fluctuations. Also, very important is to realize what is the influence of the sun cycles?
    What is happening in the rest of or planetary system?

    Big problem of our science in lots of area’s is that we developed equations based on single item interactions. Like two H2 molecule reacting with one O2 molecule to make water. However. What are the external effects of such a reaction?
    Same applies to the weather. We know little bits and pieces, NOT the whole picture. We cannot predict short time weather accurately, let alone Long time weather.

  • Nathan

    I rate this video 2 out of 5 stars for the reason I agree cap and trade is a bad move, but probably not for the same reasons. Britain tried this, and now they are at 20% unemployment. But, it’s not because of bad bussiness people. 

    People act as though bussiness men and women care nothing for the enviroment, but actually it’s quite the reverse. Being a “green” company is just another way to promote your product. The only problem is that “green energy” is so inefficient and costs so much to implement that companies take a LOSS for implementing them. How do they offset the loss? They make cuts and lay off people like any sensible company would, as getting rid of the “green energy” would cause them to have to pay fines to the government or buy off spare carbon credits, (if other bussinesses have them to sell). In other words, “green” technology isn’t efficient enough for us to even think about using on any type of large scale. 

    Let’s just look at the big picture, the only reason wind and solar are viable is because of government subsidies, nuclear power is dangerous, hydropower is expensive and has limited use, geothermal is highly experimental. Your only left with oil, coal, and natural gas, and those all produce emmisions. 

    Ohh, and I don’t know if you got the memo ma’am, but the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by government regulation on the loan industry preventing from refusing certain risky loans. 

    All of this is practically obsolete anyway. We’re on the coldest winter on record IN YEARS. It’s snowing in Florida! Add that to the climate gate email scandal, and I think the global warming idea has taken quite the beating.

    Ohh, and to Maurice, thank you. We need more people speaking up for common sense instead of making brash claims that the planet Is doomed. The science is far from settled and I am interested on where the political pieces shall fall.

    Live free or die!

  • DMW

    Even if climate change is not affected by the burning of fossil fuel, think of all the other ill effects of burning it. That alone should make us run for energy alternatives. But it doesn’t. Even in the face of handing our wealth over to foreign interests that are dangerous to our interests, still we dawdle with alternative energy solutions. You’ve got to ask yourself “Why”? And the answer that seems most correct is “Too many monied interests”. So for money, we not only justify killing our habitat and possibly ourselves, but we’ll also jeopordize our national security. That makes me angry! But it seems the only angry ones that get heard are the ones crying for more of the same.

  • podbora2p

    Even if climate change is not affected by the burning of fossil fuel, think of all the other ill effects of burning it. That alone should make us run for energy alternatives. But it doesn’t. Even in the face of handing our wealth over to foreign interests that are dangerous to our interests, still we dawdle with alternative energy solutions. You’ve got to ask yourself “Why”? And the answer that seems most correct is “Too many monied interests”. So for money, we not only justify killing our habitat and possibly ourselves, but we’ll also jeopordize our national security. That makes me angry! But it seems the only angry ones that get heard are the ones crying for more of the same.

  • http://odzyskiwaniedanych.eu Odzyskiwanie Danych

    I’ll be back here, you may learn something