Protesters disrupt New York City Carbon Trading Expo

Protesters disrupt New York City Carbon Trading Expo
Action takes place as Carbon Trading legislation prepares to clear Senate committee

New York City -- Protesters with Rising Tide North America's "Greenwash Guerrillas" paid a surprise Halloween visit to the Carbon Market Insights conference in New York City today. Posing as delegates, two protesters took the stage at the exclusive event and presented the 700 attendees with a "Deed to the Atmosphere," denouncing Carbon Trading as a sham approach to the fossil fuels crisis. The action was the first in the US to target the growing Carbon Trading industry.

"Carbon trading puts the most crucial decisions about the future of life on this planet in the hands of fossil fuel industry," said protester Jessica Starr "the very industry that got us into this mess in the first place." 

Though heavily criticized by environmental and human rights organizations world-wide, Carbon Trading is the primary mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, as well as in Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner's (R-Va.) "America's Climate Security Act of 2007." The Carbon Market Insights conference brings together the leaders of the US financial, non-profit, and "eco securities" industries backing a domestic US Carbon Trading market. 

Lieberman and Warner's bill, S. 2191, is expected to clear the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee in November. If enacted, it would create a system of tradable permits in greenhouse gas emissions, which would be gifted to status quo polluters through 2036.

As these permits may be bought and sold for enormous profits on the marketplace, the environmental group Friends of the Earth has stated that the "Lieberman climate bill may contain the biggest corporate giveaways in American history", valued at 1.5 trillion dollars. The European Emissions Trading System established under the Kyoto protocol has generated hundreds of billions of dollars of additional profits for the fossil fuel industry, yet most countries are failing to meet their greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

"Gifting free, tradable property rights to the worst polluters does little to ensure reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," said David Lee, another of the Greenwash Guerillas "Carbon Trading and the Lieberman bill are a subsidy for big polluters disguised as a climate protection measure." 

The Liebermen Bill allows the largest greenhouse gas emitters to "offset" or nullify their emissions by financing carbon reductions projects that take place in other locations, stalling implementations of technologies that will reduce greenhouse gases here. These projects, frequently initiated in developing countries, shift investment away from emission-reducing technologies domestically, and have also been criticized for not always delivering promised reductions. These projects have led to the displacement of low-carbon use communities in favor of large scale "clean development" projects including hydroelectric dams and genetically modified tree plantations. In Uganda, villagers have been arrested and even killed after being ousted from their land for tree plantations which they dared to cut down. 

"Carbon offsets do little more than the selling of indulgences by Catholic churches in the 16th century," said David Lee "it's time to get serious about stopping climate change and shut these false solutions down."
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org

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[RisingTideNetwork]

The Greenwash Guerillas will BE at Powershift 2007, at the Rising Tide table.

[kandimba]

this is briliant! we need many more protests like these all around the world. count me in!

[svosprey]

Aw man- I can't believe you gave them the key to the sky! Now what are we gonna do?

[Maxdwolf]

@neverine2000 The Venus Project claims to offer a solution, but it is a vague, one dimensional approach to the multi-dimensional, complex challenges facing our society. The stratagem they propose raises red flags about the research they talk about. It is clear they do not accept the possibility of error in their model. It will take a lot more than these vague promises and some pretty, futuristic drawings to convince me they have something.

[neverine2000]

@Maxdwolf I bring The Venus Project to the table, look it up... there is your solution...

[Maxdwolf]

So what alternate system do you propose? Don't care much what your are against. What are you for? What do you bring to the table.

[bweazel]

There's no better way to run the world? It does not make economic sense for people to buy their own cars and drive them across the country when they could use trains. It's a waste of resources. It might be nice that everyone has their own car but that doesn't make it good. Profit based systems only benefits the wealthy. Don't you realize there is no such thing as communism or capitalism? These are just words our masters use to keep up competition. They're illusions, especially today.

[bweazel]

Very well said. Is that you in the vid?

[drgonzo1971]

There's no better way to run the world. Communism is a joke, it's people were oppressed much worse than anyone in the West and they couldn't come close to our standard of living. Mass transportation didn't exactly go away, there's subways in all the major cities, it just make economic sense to put such expensive systems in little towns where everyone wants to own a car anyways.

[lonetanuki]

Why you resolutely defend a system through which you have no input, which devastates the environment, and makes a few people wealthy off of bad logic, math, and exploitation, is beyond me. I'm no primitivism advocate but thanks, try again.

[lonetanuki]

Basically you have nothing better to offer, so are making some absurd attack. Capitalism has historically annihilated equitable technologies to promote profitable ones (look at mass transportation when cars were produced, railways when petrol economies could make big-rigs omnipresent). Eventually the tipping point is reached.

[drgonzo1971]

Basically you're saying we should go back to pre-industrial times when everyone died young after short, brutish lives. That's not progressive, it's regressive.