Payal Parekh's picture
Payal Parekh
Former Climate Program Director
I put my scientific training into action as a weapon in the struggle against destructive river projects. I also work to debunk the myth that dams are good for the climate. We know that dams adversely impact a river's ability to adapt to climate change and dams in tropical regions can be major emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

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Home › Climate Change › Carbon Offsets

Check Out the “Story of Cap and Trade”

Tue, 12/01/2009 - 7:44am

Creators of the “Story of Stuff” released a great video entitled the “Story of Cap and Trade.” It takes a critical look at this market-based mechanism, which is incorrectly touted as the solution to climate change.

Cap and trade schemes are based on setting a limit to pollution. Allowances to pollute are distributed to industries. At the end of the year, industries must turn in pollution allowances equivalent to the amount they polluted. Those that polluted more than the number of allowances they received at the start of the year can purchase additional allowances from entities that polluted less (where the trade comes in). It sounds reasonable enough, but the devil is in the details. The caps are often set too high due to industry pressure, allowances are given away rather than auctioned, and they include a major loophole, offsets.  The use of offsets allow polluters to emit above the cap!

The script draws on International Rivers' cutting-edge work on offsets. Read our reports and blogs on offsets.

And, be sure to watch the video.

Comments

Fri, 12/04/2009 - 8:29am — AncientViking

How Annie L's video got so much so wrong

Apparently the utopians have Annie's ear.  

They didn't tell her that you need 60 votes to get a bill through the Senate, and that a far-left bill will get no more than about 38.

They didn't tell her that the EPA doesn't have much power over EXISTING (as opposed to new) power plants, so using existing law isn't a solution.

Whose fault are these mistakes?  ANNIE'S 19-YEAR-OLD RESEARCH ASSISTANT!

Watch here:

 http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/b2ddc4ea34/annie-lennox-now-a-climate-change-expert-holy-mother-of-jesus

 Warning - there's LOUD music... 

Wed, 12/02/2009 - 1:06pm — Katy Yan

Response to critics of the critics

There's been quite of bit of back and forth among offset critics and their critics, particularly on David Roberts' Grist article, which argues that the video misses the point. My response to his critiques of the offsets portion of the video (that Leonard dismisses "high quality" offsets) would be that the majority of offsets projects are indeed low quality because they occur predominately in countries where their additionality is highly suspect (see our page on the Clean Development Mechanism). Roberts' constant point about the fossil fuel lobby being the problem rather than policy ignores the fact that Leonard is criticizing the people behind the policy rather than just the policy itself. She could have done emphasized the role of lobbyists more, but she's hardly representing a minority opinion on Cap and Tade, nor an ignorant one (http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/about.php).
Wed, 12/02/2009 - 10:06am — Ian Elwood

Really thought provoking!

This is a deceptively difficult concept to understand, I like that this video breaks it down for the un-initiated. Grist has an interesting critique that contributes to understanding the debate about cap and trade within the environmental movement.