Is Carbon Trading Just a Giveaway to Big Polluters?

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to carbon trading. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will vote today on climate change legislation written by Senators Joseph Lieberman and John Warner. The bill is called "America's Climate Security Act."

It aims to combat global warming by using a cap-and-trade system popularly known as carbon trading. This involves setting greenhouse gas emissions limits and allowances for each industry and then creating a system to trade the allowances.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, countries can trade emissions credits and companies can earn credits by paying for emissions-reducing and clean energy projects in developing countries. Despite the US government's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, California, New York and New Jersey embraced carbon trading Tuesday, as they joined European governments, Canadian provinces, and New Zealand to launch a forum known as the International Carbon Action Partnership. Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore and institutions like the World Bank and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change also support carbon trading as a viable market-based solution to fight global warming. But critics argue carbon trading actually delays the crucial process of big polluters reducing their emissions.

Rising Tide North America is one organization that opposes carbon trading. Activists from the group disrupted a Carbon Markets Insights conference held in New York Monday. Posing as delegates, they took to the stage and denounced carbon trading as "a sham approach to the fossil fuel crisis." This is a clip of their presentation at the conference.

ACTIVIST 1: We have a very special guest for all of you here as the cutting edge of market-based solutions to climate change. We present to you a deed to the next frontier that is literally over all of your heads.

ACTIVIST 2: "This indenture made on the 30th day of October in the year of our lord two thousand and seven on behalf of the secretary of the sky bestows the full and rightful ownership of all parts of the atmosphere to the Carbon Traitors of Carbon Market Insights." Generations of the future --

ACTIVIST 1 : -- are begging you now --

ACTIVIST 2: -- renounce this treachery --

ACTIVIST 1: -- for this [inaudible]. So sick this idea, offset your illusion.

ACTIVISTS 1 & 2: There's no market-based fix for offset pollutions.

Well, today, we host a debate on carbon trading. Joining me here in Washington, D.C., two environmentalists, both committed to fighting global warming. Annie Petsonk is international counsel with Environmental Defense, a leading national environmental advocacy group. She has participated in the development of climate policy since the inception of the climate treaty talks and works to develop international laws that provide economic incentives for environmental protection. Annie Petsonk supports carbon trading.

Daphne Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is also the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and a member of the Durban Group for Climate Justice. Her research drew attention to the disproportionate ratio of fossil fuel investments by international financial institutions like the World Bank. Daphne Wysham is opposed to carbon trading. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

Annie, why don't you start off by saying why you support carbon trading? And explain it in the process.

ANNIE PETSONK: The global warming problem is an urgent one, and we don't have time to continue putting global warming pollution into the atmosphere. If we want to get countries, companies and local communities to look for and implement effective opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions, wherever they can find them -- in the home, in the office, in the school -- we've got to give people economic incentives so that it becomes in their financial self-interest to cut global warming pollution now. That's what carbon trading does. Implemented effectively, it can be a huge help, along with other policies, in getting our nation to step up to the plate, take some leadership and tackle this problem.