Carbon markets are 'bogus solutions' as rich world keeps polluting, African Climate Summit is told
Carbon markets are 'bogus solutions' as rich world keeps polluting, African Climate Summit is told
A Nigerian environmental activist has declared at the first African Climate Summit that carbon markets are “bogus solutions."
The summit has sought to reframe the African continent, which has enormous amounts of clean energy minerals and renewable energy sources, as less of a victim of climate change driven by the world’s biggest economies and more of the solution.
But investment in the continent in exchange for the ability to keep polluting elsewhere has angered some in Africa who prefer to see China, the United States, India, the European Union and others rein in their emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
“We reject forced solutions on our land,” Priscilla Achakpa, founder of the Nigeria-based Women Environmental Programme, told summit participants on the event’s final day. She urged the so-called “Global North” to “remove yourself from the perspective of the colonial past.”
There should be no offsets. Either don't pollute or pay a hefty tax proportional to the amount of pollution, those should be the options. If there are quotas, massively increased taxes past the quota, with no way of raising the quota.
Carbon storage should be an entirely separate matter, not something companies can buy into to excuse not optimizing what they're doing.
The free market isn't going to solve this problem. It isn't profitable to solve climate change.
This is where Governments are meant to step in, to serve the best interests of the people... instead they're too busy bickering over bullshit, and giving themselves and their cronies handouts.
India and China have essentially said they don't give a fuck and will keep burning coal till they run out of coal...
The other big contributer is shipping cheap junk from those same countries to the Western wealthier countries.
That we can do something about by slapping large tarrifs on all that sweatshop shit.
Do that and those countries will change their tune, because their own citizens are too poor for their economies to be self sufficient.
China is investing $6 trillion in green energy initiatives.
Economically isolating your country and cutting off international trade is non-viable and hurts the poor the most.
And corporations run the governments.
The free market is the only solution to climate change, and it is absolutely profitable to solve climate change.
The problem, as the article indicates, is that we currently subsidize fossil fuels and do not tax them to pay for their externalities, stacking the deck in favor of fossil fuels companies and away from green energy transitions.
Even with that in place, capital is flying toward green/renewable energy.
A carbon tax is 100% needed, and dividends can be handed out to bottom quintile earners to offset the cost for those who literally cannot survive the increases a carbon tax causes. Problem there is just that taxing fuel in the US almost guarantees you lose your next election.
The free market is the only solution to climate change, and it is absolutely profitable to solve climate change.
Problem there is just that taxing fuel in the US almost guarantees you lose your next election.
These are not mutually exclusive.
Capitalism trying to capitalism it's way out of a capitalism caused crisis. Classic.
most polluting country is communist china.