"Slicing up the Earth's Atmosphere for Corporate Profit "

[GreenPartyVoter]

The enclosure of the commons began several centuries ago in Europe, and alas, continues there in the 21st. This time the object of enclosure isn't land, but the carbon absorption capacity of the atmosphere.

Last week I spoke at a conference in Berlin on the state of global efforts to combat climate change. The conference was groping for a path beyond the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and whose modest targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions won't be met. I expected a fair amount of U.S.-bashing, but most of the Euro-criticism was directed at Europe itself. A main focus of ire was the European Trading System, in which governments issue tradable carbon emission permits to polluting industries.

The European governments that set up the system are doing two huge things wrong: first, they're handing out too many permits, and second, they're giving them free to polluters, who then raise prices and reap windfall profits.

In Germany, the big winners have been coal-burning utilities, and the losers have been nearly everyone else. As one German steel maker complained, “the utilities get windfall profits, and energy users get windfall costs.” In Britain, the first-year windfall to polluters was estimated at £1 billion.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1005-33.htm