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Carbon trading explained through biscuits.
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Check out our map of Britain's biggest carbon emitters.
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- Prashant
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biomass
King Corn and Capitalism
Markets - are they good or bad? Emissions trading basically uses the capitalist system to try to deliver an environmental good. But if market based capitalism and its obsession with growth helped get us into this situation in the first place can we really trust the market to get us out of trouble?
I think Amory and Hunter Lovins and Paul Hawken got it right when they set out their theories for harnessing market forces to help us stay withing ecological limits (I always recommend chapters 12 and 13 of their excellent book 'Natural Capitalism' to anyone just getting into the issue of climate change - it's clear, leaves you with a sense of optimism and it's available for free online)....
Getting the genie back in the bottle
Sandbag is about stopping emissions from occuring in the first place but once they're out there is there anything that can be done to get them back?
Obviously trees and other forms of biomass absord carbon dioxide and store it in their structures - but it's a form of temporary storage, since plants and trees eventually decay or are burnt, re-emitting the carbon dioxide. Saturday's Guardian featured an article about a new technology for scrubbing emissions out of the air - scientists at Columbia University in New York have developed a prototype machine capable of capturing a tonne of CO2 a day - costing only £100,000 to build and small enough to fit in a shipping container.
From the Blog
The times they are a-changing (and other clichés)
So much will be written, has already been written, about this historic US election that it seems pointless to add to the cacophony, but there really is nothing else that warrants writing about right now. The EU carbon price may be elegantly swan-diving and the reasons are interesting, but if there is one thing that will positively affect the future of the global carbon market it’s tonight’s result.
If the US elects Obama and we witness the dawn a new era in international relations in the US then the chances of working out a new climate deal are substantially improved. But, as with the last one, with regard to the nature of that deal what the US wants it will almost certainly get – such is the importance that everyone – Europe, China, India, Africa - places on getting them back in the game. Not only because they are such a huge source of emissions but also because the US has such a fantastic track record in incubating and commercialising new technologies.