Kyoto Trading Cards

For work reasons, I’ve been reading a report on emissions trading and the Kyoto Protocol, and you know what? This is bullshit.

There’s a provision that allows rich, western countries to "help" poor underdeveloped countries cut their emissions. And then the rich country can use this help in their tally of reducing emissions, even though they haven’t actually cut any pollution in their own country.

Basically it’s a provision that allow countries like Canada or France (let’s not even mention the USA) to keep polluting their heads off while earning stupid do-gooder brownie points by saying oh look we helped Guatemala or Uganda reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Not that they were emitting that many in the first place, but that’s the way it is. It’s always easier to make the poor, weak guy clean up his act than do it yourself.

And, as a bonus, we get to keep producing whatever it is we produce as cheaply as we can while making the poor country increase its production costs, so they can never get ahead. It’s a western win-win, make money and keep polluting while keeping the poor guys down. Way to go.

Then there’s this whole "market" where countries can buy and sell their emissions credits. Again, it’s a way for rich countries to buy their way out of actually doing the hard work of reducing pollution. Just buy the credits off the poor guys who don’t use all their credits because they are poor and not manufacturing all that much.

I suppose the only way to get a global agreement is to leave plenty of loopholes for the rich countries to buy their way out of responsibility, but still. This is the best we can do? It’s sad.