Carbon pricing & trading has come to dominate the debate on how to curb climate change. Its proponents span the field, from governments and corporations to parts of the white climate movement in the Global North. Simply put, with carbon pricing, a price is put on carbon emissions (usually CO2) by either taxing its production or by creating an emissions trading system. Such policies aim to make carbon pollution more expensive, to reduce demand and to eventually create incentives for companies to invest in renewable energy.
Shell has consistently supported carbon emissions trading and, in certain areas of the world, carbon taxes. Beyond carbon capture and nature-based solutions, it promotes reliance on carbon markets as a core climate action strategy that is in line with their business goals. But how successful have these neoliberal tools really been in moving us towards an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist future? Can some of their inefficiencies be resolved by tweaking market rules or is the idea of carbon pricing simply doomed to fail based on an inherently flawed logic?
For this discussion we will be joined by Dr. Tamra Gilbertson, she is the Climate Change and Forest Policy Advisor at Indigenous Environmental Network or IEN. She is also a longtime activist, scholar and educator on the topic of carbon pricing.
Show Notes
The UN Agenda 21 report on sustainable development in the 21st Century: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agenda21
Kyoto Protocol 1997: https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol
CDM or Clean Development Mechanism: https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-kyoto-protocol/mechanisms-under-the-kyoto-protocol/the-clean-development-mechanism
Short report that looks at the history of the Emissions Trading Systems we have today: https://co2colonialism.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Carbon-Pricing-A-Critical-Perspective-for-Community-Resistance-Online-Version.pdf
A list of terms that we refer to, like cap and trade, REDD, carbon capture and nature-based solutions: https://co2colonialism.org/list-of-terms/
Education toolkit from IEN on carbon pricing: https://co2colonialism.org/
IEN’s media platform, Indigenous Rising, which will be launching a podcast of its own soon hopefully during COP26: https://indigenousrising.org/
Indigenous Environmental Network’s website: http://ienearth.org/
Tamra refers to Turtle Island in the episode, which is the name that a number of Indigenous nations use for the land mass known as ‘North America’.