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The Problem With Carbon-Cutting Programs

Posted by samzenpus on from the selling-warm dept.

Med-trump writes "Alberta's $60 million carbon-cutting program is failing, according to the latest report from the Canadian province's auditor-general, Merwan Saher. A news article in Nature adds: 'the province, despite earlier warnings, has not improved its regulatory structure — and calls the emissions estimates and the offsets themselves into question.'"

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Not much of a surprise by ShakaUVM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe. The baseline CO2 levels were set at 1990 levels, which was right before the collapse of the USSR and the resultant massive decrease in their CO2 output levels. (Likewise, our CO2 production has decreased since 2007 since our economy has tanked.)

    The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Alberta's emissions trading scheme has run into identical problems.

    While carbon trading schemes are admirable in their attempt to internalize external costs, in practice they're just not a very good idea.

    1. Re:Not much of a surprise by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I wouldn't classify myself as a climate change denier, but I don't believe the world as we know it can get a political fix for it. In order for the world to terraform itself(Yes, the solution is a form of terraforming, and could be useful for Mars in hundreds of years), we must get enough of the countries agreeing with each other. Right now we have problems just agreeing not to kill each other. Even some of the best governments have corruption in them too. Do we want to go,"More power to the governments!"? To me it is no surprise that the guy who rose awareness to the issue is a politician himself because it is a power grab move.

      --
      God spoke to me
  2. Re:It's Alberta... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Techniques for extracting these reserves are being developed that ..."
    That just raises costs even more. Funny thing is, without those really really heavy subsidies fossil fuels wouldn't be so cheap as they are today. Think about it for a moment, when it was first used, the oil came from wells so close to the surface, that drilling was so simple and could be done with that "ancient" technology. Nowadays we have oil platforms, underwater pipes and transcontinental pipes, gargantuan ships travelling from one side of the globe to the other. Costs are incredibly higher now, than 100 years ago. Fossil fuels will stop being used long before we run out.

    You might argue that the technology doesn't exist. Well, you might find it shocking, but people don't invent things just because they "had an idea". There has to be a need for something, before it's invented. Oil is already becoming expensive, not expensive enough to ground aircraft and force ships to switch back to steam power, but enough to make people take another look at alternatives.