By: Tom Schueneman

Why you can’t solve a problem with the thinking that created it

Many are probably aware of the viral video hit The Story of Stuff created by Annie Leonard. Today the Story of Stuff Project, in partnership with Climate Justice Now!, releases it’s next project, an animated 9-minute video called The Story of Cap and Trade.

Produced by Free Range Studios, The Story of Cap and Trade does what no congressional hearing or lobbyist talking head can do - make a greenhouse gas cap and trade scheme comprehensible. The short video by no means explains the entire scope of the cap and trade schemes proposed here in the US, or in place internationally, but what it does give a thorough grounding on the subject so that you and I can start to make sense of it. Once we do that, we can explore further, ask questions, begin a real dialog, and perhaps see why cap and trade schemes are not the best mechanism to deal with carbon emissions and climate change. Based on that, we can act and urge our leaders to make better choices.

With the world beginning to focus on the start of the COP15 climate conference next week, the timing couldn’t be better.

A false solution?

Last week I spoke with Daphne Wysham, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-director of IPS' Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Daphne was one of the principal consultants on the film and explained why she believes that cap and trade is a false solution to the challenge of stabilizing and then reducing carbon emissions. And it isn’t just her. In her research for the project, she heard from many legislators and policy wonks that may offer public support to the current cap and trade bills now before Congress, but privately harbor serious doubts as to the viability of a carbon trading scheme.

Why is this? Cap and trade isn’t new. It’s been considered by many as an unequivocal success in reducing acid rain in the United States. But many also fear that cap and trade for sulfur dioxide is one thing, and quite another for carbon.

The problem lay in the details, Wysham told me (and the film argues), and can be refined to three main problems:

• Who sets the cap? - Defining the cap is something set in smokey back rooms by political wheeler-dealers. The point is that it’s primarily a political consideration. As the example of the high initial cap of the European Union’s first round of carbon trading demonstrated, an overallocation of free emissions “allowances” to polluters can force the price of the allowances to collapse and do little to motivate any real reduction of emissions. (To be fair, much of the problems of the first round of trading has been addressed in second round that began in 2008. Some have characterized the first round as the “trial phase.” For more on the EU Trading Scheme, see this paper done by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (pdf))
• Regulating carbon offset markets - is it really the best idea to hand over the buying and selling of carbon offsets to the same people that brought us the crash of ‘08? There is continuing doubt about the effectiveness of carbon offsets, and turning them into a financial instrument traded in the derivatives market is likely to blow huge sums of cash into a bubble that will one day burst. We all know how that feels.
• Free pollution permits - the wrong signal is sent by simply giving away pollution permits to the nation’s worst polluters. The Story of Cap and Trade suggests that all emissions credits should be sold or auctioned by the government, who can then use the revenue to fund clean energy development

Real progress

Wysham told me that cap and trade schemes really just play around the edges, giving an impression that something is being done about reducing carbon emissions, when it really isn’t. That’s one of the big problems outlined in The Story of Cap and Trade - that of distraction. With scientists saying the world needs to peak its carbon emissions within ten years, if not sooner, chasing down the dead-end road of cap and trade is a dangerous diversion to real progress.

What is needed is a tax shift that puts a definite price on carbon and shifts incentives toward clean energy development and efficiency. In particular the huge subsidies still given to fossil fuel development needs to shift to renewable energy expansion and distribution.

A new way of thinking is required. As we said at the outset, “you can’t solve a problem with the thinking that created it.”

Hope

So does that mean there is no hope for implementation of a workable solution to emissions reduction and climate change? Not necessarily, say Wysham. The current debate in Congress, such as it is, “reveals the process” of cap and trade and means that finally the country is having a conversation about how to address the challenge. And that’s where The Story of Cap and Trade serves it’s purpose.

I spoke with Free Range Studios founder Jonah Sachs over the weekend. For Sachs, the way we all understand our lives and the issues before us is through narrative. OUr lives and our world is told and understood through stories. By delivering a clear, repeatable message, people will begin to comprehend the issue at hand and thus drive social change. It’s a bottom-up approach that can spread a message through people’s conversation and help create real dialog. “The only potential for change,” says Sachs, “is through media that is democratized. People speaking to each other, one on one.”

So here, at last, it is: The Story of Cap and Trade. You may not entirely agree with it, it might make you ask some questions. It hopefully will help you better understand what is at stake and talk about it with friends and colleagues, and they with theirs.

That’s the whole point.

The two countries agreed on a comprehensive Memorandum of Understanding to enhance cooperation on Energy Security, Energy Efficiency, Clean Energy, and Climate Change.

Through this Memorandum, both countries will work jointly to accelerate development and deployment of clean energy technologies and to strengthen cooperation on adaptation to climate change, climate science, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from forests and land use.

* Prime Minister Singh and President Obama agreed to encourage the mobilization of public and privatefunds that would invest in clean energy projects in India. This represents a major step forward in U.S. - India partnerships to strengthen their economic growth and energy security, while also addressing the threat of global climate change.

* Prime Minister Singh and President Obama affirmed that the Copenhagen outcome must be comprehensive and cover mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technology. Moreover, it should reflect emission reduction targets for developed countries and nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries.

There should be scaled-up finance, technology, and capacity-building support. There should be full transparency as to the implementation of their mitigation commitments and appropriate processes for review. Both leaders resolved to take significant mitigation actions and to stand by these commitments.

* In addition, the two leaders launched an Indo-U.S. Clean Energy Research and Deployment Initiative, supported by U.S. and Indian government funding and private sector contributions. This new Initiative will include a Joint Research Center operating in both the United States and India to foster innovation and joint efforts to accelerate deployment of clean energy technologies.

The Initiative will allow the two governments to leverage expertise from both countries including government, private industry, and higher education to accelerate the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies. The Initiative will facilitate joint research, scientific exchanges, and sharing of proven innovation and deployment policies.

* The Initiative's work will be complemented by two Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) on Solar Energy and Wind Energy. Through the MOU on Solar Energy, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) will partner with India's Solar Energy Centre to develop a comprehensive nation-wide map of solar energy potential.

More than two dozen U.S. and Indian cities will partner to jointly advance solar energy deployment. The MOU on Wind Energy between NREL and India's Centre for Wind Energy Technology will focus in particular on supporting efforts to develop a low-wind speed turbine technology program.

* The U.S. and India will increase cooperation on unconventional natural gas including on coal bed methane, natural gas hydrates, and shale gas

The two countries will also work to reduce emissions from land use, including deforestation, forest degradation, enhanced sequestration, and sustainable management of forests.

* Working with India's Ministry of Environment and Forests, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will provide technical support for Indian efforts to establish an National Environmental Protection Authority focused on creating a more effective system of environmental governance, regulation and enforcement.

* In support of food security and climate change objectives, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will work with India's Ministry of Earth Sciences to more accurately forecast monsoons, and thereby reduce risks associated with climate change and to develop early warning systems to protect people and crops from the adverse effects of extreme weather.
Image: NASA
Source: Green Partnership Fact Sheet

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Reprinted from Cleantechnica with permission from Green Options Media.

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