Ways forward
Chapter 5 of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power
first published 9 October 2006
Chapter 5 of the book, Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, dissects and sets aside the claim that there are no alternatives to carbon trading in addressing climate change.
Conventional regulation, public works, green taxes, legal action, popular movements against fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel pollution, shifting of subsidies away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy toward renewable energy -- taken together, such actions are far more effective than carbon trading in effecting the structural change needed to tackle global warming.
Many of these types of action are already already being taken, and some boast a record of success in bringing about social and environmental change stretching back centuries. The debate over climate solutions needs to be conducted not only by corporations, ministries, specialists and big NGOs but by a wider public.