Politics of Carbon

Question 1

Why is knowing residence times in global carbon cycle critical?

Answer 1

Has major implications on how to manage carbon budgets and sequestration efforts

Question 2

Why are there uncertainties in the estimates of residence times of carbon in the global cycle?

Answer 2

Components of carbon cycle are difficult to measure and cannot straightforwardly upscale from point to regional an global scales

Question 3

How much carbon was released into the atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions?

Answer 3

Of 545 Pg C released to atmosphere from fossil fuel emissions from 1750 to 2011, 240 Pg C accumulated in the atmosphere

Question 4

What are the critiques of CDM?

Answer 4

• Offset credit calculations are prone to exaggerations in the business-as-usual estimate, which means many schemes do meet condition of additionality (i.e. have no effect on CO2 reduction)
• Under CDM project requires whole new set of government techniques

Question 5

What are the ethics of carbon offset?

Answer 5

• Current markets under-price CO2
• How much reduction is it ethical to purchase from others?
• If CDM offsets are premised on paying others to meet obligations, can it be ethical at all?

Question 6

What quote from the Indian Centre for Science and the Environment describes carbon colonialism?

Answer 6

“Rush to make profits out of carbon-fixing engenders another kind of colonialism”

Bachram, 2004

Question 7

What is the scientific analysis of CDM process?

Answer 7

• No scientific credibility that practice of soaking up pollution using sequesterian
• Carbon stored above ground (i.e. in trees) not the same as carbon stored below ground (i.e. fossil fuels)

Bachram (2004)

Question 8

How is the CDM a form of carbon colonialism?

Answer 8

• Kyoto Protocol allows industrialised countries access to a parcel of land roughly the size of one small Southern nation every year for generation of CDM carbon sink credits
• Responsibility for over consumptive lifestyles of richer nation is pushed on the poor
• South becomes a carbon dump for the industrialized world

Bachram (2004)

Question 9

How does the Kyoto Protcol not recognise Indigeous people under the CDM program?

Answer 9

Carbon sinks under the Kyoto Protocol can only qualify for emission credits if they are managed by those with official status: old-growth rainforest inhabited by Indigenous people does not qualify under these rules as managed and cannot get credits

Bachram (2004)

Question 10

What does the process of commodity fetishism do to payment for ecosystem services?

Answer 10

• Narrowing down complex ecosystem into single services has ethical implications for how we perceive nature
• Denies multiplicity of values attributed to a service
• Characterised by power asymmetries that reproduce rather than readdress existing inequalities

Kosoy and Corbera (2008)

Question 11

What does carbon sequestatrion do to the monetary exchange value?

Answer 11

Carbon sequestration attributed monetary exchange value and value fluctuates depending on cost of reducing one tonne of CO2 elsewhere and by other means

Kosoy and Corbera (2008)