Melanie Jarman | ukwatch.net

Voices of Descent

Tim Holmes — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:16:18 +0000

Under the catchy title of Transition Town Totnes, the south Devon town is the first in the UK to explore what it means to undergo the transition to a carbon-constrained, energy-lean world at a local level. By consciously planning and designing for changes on the horizon, rather than reacting to resource shortages as they are thrust upon them, the participants hope that their town will become more resilient, more abundant and more pleasurable than the present.

The seeds of the transition town idea lie in the small Irish town of Kinsale, where in 2005 a group of students at the local further education college developed a process for residents to draw up an ‘energy descent action plan’ – a tool to design a positive timetabled way through the huge changes that will occur as world oil production peaks. The action plan covers a number of areas of life in Kinsale, including food, energy, tourism, education and health.

For example, for food, the plan envisions that by 2021 the town will have made the transition from dependency to self-reliance, where ‘all landscaping in the town comprises of edible plants, fruit trees line the streets, all parks and greens have become food forests and community gardens’. As a practical step towards this, the plan recommends the immediate appointment of a local food officer.

For housing, the plan envisions that by 2021 ‘all new buildings in Kinsale will include such things as a high level of energy efficiency together with a high portion of local sustainable materials’. A suggested immediate practical step towards this is a review of current building practices and future development plans.

The energy descent action plan approach landed in the UK when a Kinsale college tutor, Rob Hopkins, moved to Totnes and held a number of talks and film screenings to introduce the idea. In September 2006 Transition Town Totnes was launched, seeking ‘to engage all sectors of the community in addressing this, the great transition of our time’ and seeking to put ‘Totnes on the international map as a community that engaged its creativity and collective genius with this timely and pressing issue’. The initiative has spread beyond Totnes just one year on; towns and villages around the UK have started developing a transition town approach for themselves (see box).

One reason why the initiative has caught people’s imaginations is that, at its core, is a hopeful message. Many ‘transitioners’ are motivated to change energy use patterns not just because of energy shortages in the future but because of self-imposed energy rationing now – because cutting fossil fuel use is essential if climate change is to be lessened.

The transition movement shakes off the usual gloom and limitation around this message by calling for positive and pro-active changes. These are based in how the world actually is, rather than how we would like it to be if only someone, somewhere, would come up with that miraculous solution that will allow us to expand infinitely and indefinitely, all within a finite world. Rather than a vision of deferred promise and baseless hope it offers community-wide participation to find realistic and workable answers.

Whether the transition town approach can work at a citywide level, or whether its call for reduced consumption will have a wider impact on, for example, international trading systems and their inherently heavy use of fossil fuels, remains to be seen. In Totnes, at least, the creation of new businesses and land use initiatives suggests that the transitioners are in it for the long haul.

Carbon Offsets Pushed Off Course?

Alex Doherty — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:22:26 +0000

The dubious practice of carbon offsets faced an upset recently when The Phone Co-op, widely viewed as a standard-bearer of ethical practice, faced a motion at its Annual General Meeting calling on the telecoms company to end its involvement in carbon offset deals. Carbon offsets, whereby individuals or organisations pay towards low-emission projects elsewhere in order to compensate for their own greenhouse gas emissions, have always received a mixed reaction from the environmental community. Andrew Wood, Phone Co-op member and proposer of the AGM motion, summed up such schemes as unethical saying they were based on a fiction, which put the responsibility for dealing with our pollution onto someone else. The debate opened up by the motion to The Phone Co-op AGM suggests that the schemes days may indeed be numbered.

Probably the most controversial of the offset activities supported by The Phone Co-op is the practice of counting carbon dioxide stored in forestry projects as compensation for carbon dioxide emissions generated elsewhere. The EU lobby group FERN describes such accounting as 'forest fraud'. While trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere they are not an effective long-term store: trees may release their carbon through being cut down or may succumb to pests, disease or fire. Meanwhile our understanding of the role of trees in climate change is still developing and exact measurements of the carbon moving in and out of forests are not possible. As the motion to The Phone Co-op AGM pointed out: Recently trees were found to emit methane, a climate change gas. No offset project has ever considered these emissions in their calculations; and it is unlikely that this was the last surprise in the way forests function that science will uncover.

The Phone Co-ops problem lies in the fact that in the year to August 2004 it paid £971.80 to the company Climate Care for carbon offsets to cover greenhouse gases generated through The Phone Co-ops own activities and those of its suppliers. While The Phone Co-op has stated that it intends to reduce its impact on the environment, the motion before the AGM gave examples of how the company could demonstrate a more genuine commitment to tackling climate change. The motion suggested that The Phone Co-op could follow the Co-op Bank in partnering with Friends of the Earths Big Ask campaign, which aims to introduce a law resulting in three per cent year on year reductions of greenhouse gases. Fundamentally, the motion stated that We should take responsibility for our own pollution, and reduce emissions.

However, the AGM motion went further than pointing out that The Phone Co-ops current approach to climate change was inadequate: it suggested that the carbon offset strategy is actually counter-productive to any real action on climate change. For alongside The Phone Co-op, Climate Cares client list includes the airline BA. BAs arrangement includes a package giving its customers the chance to buy carbon offsets from Climate Care to compensate for greenhouse gases emitted during a flight. Phone Co-op member Andrew Wood described BAs partnership with Climate Care as part of a public relations posture, allowing for continued business-as-usual in an industry that is one of the most destructive in terms of climate change. Wood stated: The Phone Co-op should not be partnering with Climate Care as its support for a highly damaging industry is unacceptable. We should be supporting the communities opposing expansion of airports and the expansion of air travel, rather than BA.

The Phone Co-ops stance on carbon offsetting is important as its entire brand is based on its reputation as an ethical company. According to its own surveys, 70 per cent of its customers move their telecom services to the company because of its ethical and environmental commitments. While involvement in carbon offsetting undermines The Phone Co-ops ethical reputation, a move away from carbon offsets would give a symbolic boost to those trying to highlight problems with the schemes.

Unfortunately, when it came to the day of the AGM, co-op members never had a chance to vote on the controversial motion. The company Board introduced what Andrew Wood described as a wrecking amendment, while Chief Executive Vivian Woodell stated that: We see real social and environmental benefits from the carbon offsets schemes and dont understand why people are criticising this.

The heat may be off The Phone Co-op for another year but the controversy over carbon offsets is likely to continue. Meanwhile the telecoms company has been promised a re-match, with Adam Maanit of the New Internationalist magazine saying: Carbon offsetting is becoming more and more controversial and the debate will reach The Phone Co-ops AGM once again.

__For more on carbon offsets see www.carbontradewatch.org__

From Dissent to Descent

Alex Doherty — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 21:38:09 +0000

An honest move from a politician can be a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy fog of misleading claptrap. Still, there was something too darn honest about the way in which Putin marked his ascendancy to a prestigious role on the world stage chair of the G8 by exercising his most potent tool and limiting his countrys energy exports. The statement from UK Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks that the situation posed "no immediate threat" to UK supplies was of a more usual order, being true, strictly speaking, but failing to engage with the wider issues raised by the crisis. Indeed, UK concerns over gas supplies have been bubbling away for months: only days before Russias move the Daily Mail saw out 2005 with the speculative headline of £1000 a year power bills as prices soar.

While Russia will certainly not be the only source for the 80% of gas imports that the UK is expected to rely on by 2020, it is expected to provide the EU with half its gas imports by 2020 and is a key industry player. In this knowledge, as he stepped up to the G8 chair, Putin declared that energy issues are at the top of his agenda. This may be an enlightening sequel to last years G8 focus on climate change. After all, that agenda was never going to get far while it skirted around the fact that patterns of energy use are at the root of humanitys contribution to unprecedented atmospheric changes. G8 action such as funding low energy light bulbs in poorer countries was all well and good. However, the issue of decreasing availability of cheap energy supplies - and thus the need to fundamentally re-structure patterns of energy use never lost its place as the proverbial elephant in the corner.

The UKs Energy Review, due to report this summer, does aim to address the question of how to diversify energy supplies away from fossil fuels. This is likely to include such unimaginative proposals as an expansion of nuclear power - a costly and dirty technology that can only ever meet a limited amount of energy demand anyway. An equally valid question on energy is not just how to diversify, but how to reduce demand in the first place. For example, even if we blindfold ourselves to the controversy around biofuel production and decide to run our cars on this alternative and superficially less polluting fuel, the energy needed to make cars in the first place will increasingly be prohibitively expensive. And increasingly expensive fossil fuels are still needed to manufacture the components for machines that generate renewable energy.

The sooner we start working out how best to shift from a high energy consumption world to a low energy one, the less painful the transition will be. The sooner we engage with this energy descent, the less likely it is that the end result will be bleak. Indeed, Rob Hopkins, a ground-breaking promoter of Energy Descent Action Plans, sees it as quite the opposite, describing it as an opportunity for great inventiveness. Hopkins helped draw up an Energy Descent Action Plan for the town of Kinsale in Ireland. He describes the Plan as a timetable by which Kinsale can begin putting in place the elements it will need in order to navigate the troubled waters ahead a roadmap to sustainability, to localisation, to abundance. Hopkins is now refining the model of Energy Descent Action Plans to apply them anywhere. He aims to develop grassroots-led responses to the inevitable transition that will come as energy problems intensify.

Hopkins work is strongly concerned with the nature of the culture in which we operate, and in which we envision a possible future. For energy descent involves more fundamental thinking than is likely to be found in the terms of the UKs Energy Review, or in an Energy Ministers response to Russias turning of the gas tap. Energy descent has to include a re-think of most aspects of our lives. While the work of pioneers such as Hopkins currently lacks the global profile of Putins energy strategy, or the lobbying power of the nuclear industry, it has an integrity that is difficult to beat - and a potential that is difficult to resist.

__For more on Energy Descent and related issues see www.transitionculture.org__

Green or Growth Manchester's Choice

Alex Doherty — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 13:17:51 +0000

Think Manchester. Think dark Satanic mills. Think rainclouds hemmed in by the Pennines. Even if the contamination from its once-proud industrial heritage werent gloomy, and its streets werent filled with the fumes from a city on the move, Manchesters geography would still cast the city in a shade of grey. Yet Manchester is seeking a change of colour - quite a dramatic change in fact. For in a resolution passed by its executive earlier this year the City Council declared that it was setting itself the target of becoming Britains Greenest City.

The term the greenest is just one of the superlatives included in the manifesto of Manchesters Labour Party, which holds a majority of seats on the Council. Manifesto pledges are one thing sticking to them is another. On promotion to the position of Executive Member for Planning and the Environment, Labour Councillor Neil Swannick began to think about what it might mean in practice to fulfil the greenest city pledge. After speaking to various lobby groups around the city he realised that there was considerable support for the move. The idea emerged he says, that if we are to develop as a competitive city, then sustainability will be one of the key drivers of this.

Manchester City Council has based its understanding of what it might mean to be the greenest city on a definition drawn up by The University of Manchesters Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology. This describes a green city as not just a city that has an abundance of green space, but rather it is a modern, vibrant and resilient city with its eye on the future. The resolution that went before Manchesters executive this year stated that the greenness of the city will be a steadily growing driver of its economic success and social well being. A greener city, it said, can reduce poverty and improve the health of the population.

The resolution has met a guarded welcome from the citys environmental community. There is a sense that this is a step in the right direction and a much-needed response to ever more pressing environmental problems. Yet some have raised the question of whether the greening drive is simply about getting extra publicity for meeting government targets, while sidelining genuine environmental change, such as tackling resource use. Chris Walsh, founder of MERCi, an independent charity working to make Manchester more sustainable, said: To an extent the Council is simply amalgamating stuff that it is being asked to do by central government, rather than starting from environmental first principles. I havent heard anyone talk about reducing consumption, for example, or following the proximity principle.

Walshs concerns are reflected by the citys only Green Party Councillor, Vanessa Hall. Hall believes that her election two years ago to a formerly safe Labour seat has had a bearing on Manchesters increased interest in an environmental agenda. She is sceptical about the greenest city plans, saying that: the Council is really good at coming up with policies that look good on paper. But when you look at the resolution that went before the executive they are not saying anything radical, and are actually going for low targets over a long period of time. Hall gives an example of paper bulletins been posted in every Councillors pigeonhole, despite every Councillor having access to email. To recycle the paper used is one thing she says, but cutting back on paper use to start with is even more important. She sees this as symptomatic of a wider failure to engage with the issues: within Manchester Council, environmental issues have become a box to tick. Its not at the core of what we are doing.

Though Councillor Swannick consulted some lobby groups to get support for the greenest city proposal, the charge that Manchesters environmental ambitions are too limited may have carried less weight if the citys residents had been consulted about what a green city meant to them. It concerns me when such phrases are used with little understanding behind them says Chris Walsh. The first thing I would have done would be to bring people who live in the city together to define what a green city means to us.

Engaging public opinion is not the only challenge faced by the quest for greenest city status. For the context of the initiative is that Manchester is also seeking economic growth. This says Chris Walsh, means a continual increase in the amount of stuff that is sold, generated and produced in the city. Any cuts in resource use are likely to get swallowed up by being part of an ever-increasing productivity overall. Catriona Fothergill, Co-ordinator of Manchesters Environment Network, also acknowledges the conflict between a vision of preserving resources and a vision of economic growth. It will need negotiating at some point people in the drive to green Manchester cant assume that everyone will be prepared to accept the objectives says Fothergill. Councillor Hall thinks that the prospects for such negotiation are bleak: this is why Manchester will never be the greenest city the environmental agenda will only be allowed to do things that make money or dont interfere with the economic growth agenda.

While it sounds like a healthy debate over the gulf between being greenest and being (conventionally) wealthiest is on its way, Councillor Swannick remains sanguine: We want to lead as a city into areas that were previously thought of as only suitable for a smaller or rural place. As a huge city we are a major user of resources and energy so have a long way to go. On the other hand, in terms of reducing our eco-footprint, we have a lot to give.

__References available on request__

meljarman@redpepper.org.uk

Heed the Weathermen

christian — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:58:18 +0000

In September two stories signalled to all but the most blinkered that the consequences of climate change have begun to unfold.

Firstly, the announcement came that the ice sheet in the Arctic is the smallest it has been for at least the last one hundred years. Characteristic swathes of gleaming white are disappearing so fast that Mark Serreze of the USs National Snow and Ice Data Center said the Arctic is "becoming a profoundly different place than we grew up thinking about". The remaining dark water holds heat far better than the reflective surfaces it replaces. This makes it more difficult for the ice to re-form and amplifies the Arctics pattern of increasing temperatures. An article from the American Geophysical Union concluded: it is difficult to identify a single feedback mechanism within the Arctic that has the potency or speed to alter the systems present course.

A world away from the frozen expanses of the North, the water in the Gulf of Mexico has also been warming. This at least is on the edge of the media radar, for it contributed to a headline-grabbing event Hurricane Katrina. Without the warmer sea-surface temperatures said Greg Holland of the USs National Center for Atmospheric Research, Katrina might only have been a category 2 or 3. This echoes research in the journal Science, which noted an increase in the strength of hurricanes over the last 35 years, alongside an increase in sea-surface temperatures. The Centers for Atmospheric Research and for Snow and Ice Data seem to be clear about what is going on. Mark Serreze of the latter says: "I think the evidence is growing very, very strong that part of what we're seeing now is the increased greenhouse effect. If you asked me, I'd bet the mortgage that that's just what's happening."

Faced with a clearly warming world, and the predicted presence of an unpredictably changing climate, what do our leaders do? Well, US Republicans have recognised that Katrina has implications for energy policy. But, as post-Katrina reconstruction may be used by the neo-conservatives as an opportunity to pursue their social agenda, so Katrina may be used to push for measures that didnt make it into energy policy first time around. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, the Republicans proposed a reduction of environmental regulations on oil refineries, and re-iterated their call for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be opened for oil and gas development. According to Joe Barton, the Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee: If there is a silver lining in this, it is that it may finally bring home to the American people how fragile our energy sector is 25% of our oil production is in the Gulf of Mexico. It doesnt have to be that way. We could be drilling in Alaska right now. With Alaska drilling still too controversial, the Republicans have reverted to their pre-Katrina strategy of pursuing it through the budgetary process. Still, its really quite mind-blowing that Katrina should be an excuse for measures that keep energy policy centred on the fuels whose emissions accelerate climate change.

Meanwhile, as the Arctic dwindled, Blair dawdled. What goes on in the Arctic is of great importance to the UK. The UK shares a latitude with Siberia and would be similarly chilly if it werent for the Gulf Stream current, which is driven by cold water sinking in the Arctic. A trend of rising Arctic temperatures does not, therefore, bode well. Yet rather than adopting greater determination to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change, Blair has drawn closer to the Bush approach: at a September conference of the Clinton Global Initiative, Blair appeared to shift away from treaties for cutting emissions and toward technological solutions.

In the light of Hurricane Katrina, Chris Johnstone, editor of the newsletter The Great Turning Times wrote: In my work in the addictions field, I explore with clients how crisis can become a turning point. When something awful happens, it can become the hitting bottom that leads to positive change. For such a turning to occur, the client needs to recognise the link between the disaster and the behaviours that made it more likely. Whether this happens with Katrina or not depends on how we look. Our formal leaders look away from the findings of the likes of the Center for Atmospheric Research and the Center for Snow and Ice Data Center. Will we?

meljarman@redpepper.org.uk

References available on request

The G8 and Climate Change

christian — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 23:41:27 +0000

When the G8 meet in Scotland this July one of the two issues at the top of their agenda is climate change. And rightly so: UK Prime Minister Tony Blair - current holder of the G8 Presidency - has described it as "long-term the single most important issue we face as a global community". Meanwhile the Pentagon has suggested that "the risk of abrupt climate change should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern". The other top issue on the G8 agenda is poverty in Africa - a conundrum with no hope of resolution without, at least, a stable climate. The cost of environmental degradation in Ghana is already estimated to be two per cent of national income. Meanwhile, Africa's dependence on ecosystems that are under severe pressure from unpredictable weather patterns means that the continent may be home to up to 80 per cent of the people predicted to be at risk from hunger by 2080. Despite a compelling combination of expressed concern and pressing need, effective G8 action on climate change is, unfortunately, about as likely as a dash to the slaughterhouse by turkeys in late November. The forecast for the G8 summit is certainly looking bleak.

One of the fundamental blocks to G8 engagement with climate change is the fact that these most industrialised countries are all most reliant on that key driver of climate change: oil. Despite being only eight countries, the G8 member states produce around 47 per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions and are home to most of the world's top twenty oil companies. Russia has the biggest oil reserves of all the G8 countries and would certainly struggle without its fossil fuel exports. Another forum that the G8 dominates - the World Bank - illustrates the level of G8 commitment to fossil fuels. World Bank support for fossil fuel projects amounts to around 94 per cent of its energy portfolio, while support for renewables is around just six per cent.

Reliant on fossil fuels, and so reluctant to engage in the shift in energy sources that climate change demands, the G8 countries are investing in the other end of things - capture of the greenhouse gases emitted when these fuels are used. G8 members are supportive of the idea of storing carbon dioxide both above and below ground to prevent it being released into the atmosphere, with G8 countries pledging to invest in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. Underground burial involves great stashes under land or sea, with no current certainty over the logistics of such a process, nor guarantee against leaks at a future date. The G8 countries involved in the Kyoto process have, in agreements under the Protocol, expressed support for overground capture in the form of 'carbon sinks'. This involves the planting or conservation of forests and trees. After all, as is commonly understood, trees soak up carbon dioxide. While this basic scientific point is true, methods of accounting for just how much carbon dioxide a tree can store are far more complex. Forests and tree plantations are subject to unpredictable influences including wildfires, pests, diseases and availability of nutrients. Temperature change from global warming is a fairly predictable factor but the changes that this will bring in trees' behaviour are not. And human behaviour, fortunately, can be equally unpredictable.

While visiting Scotland, one project that the G8 leaders may wish to reflect on is a carbon sink project in Brazil, which is funded by BP, the global oil company that owns Scotland's major oil refinery at Grangemouth on the River Forth. To make up for carbon dioxide emitted in its operations at Grangemouth and across the globe, BP has funded carbon sinks, including eucalyptus plantations in Espirito Santo, Brazil. The people of Espirito Santo are, however, not so keen on their role as passive components in an accounting system that has over-consumption by rich countries as its bottom line. This May, indigenous people in the area reclaimed 11,000 hectares of land, including eucalyptus plantations, for restoration to native forest and construction of new villages. The reclaimers point out that the monoculture eucalyptus plantations created as carbon sinks are an environmental pest, rather than an environmental solution. The eucalyptus plantations allow for pesticide run-off and poisoning. They consume vast amounts of water resources, devastate local agriculture and support little biodiversity. Heidi Bachram of Carbon Trade Watch has suggested that such carbon sink plantations have a specifically political role, describing how they act "as an occupying force in impoverished rural communities dependent on these lands for survival".

In terms of issues around international debt - which are also due to be addressed at the G8 meeting - indigenous participants at a 2003 Forest Peoples Programme workshop in India released a declaration stating that: "the carbon credit approach [to climate change] may trigger a new wave of debt mechanism and inequity on the South. The more carbon a person / company in a Northern country emit, the more land it will be entitled to grab in the South for its carbon emissions." The trend of richer countries taking resources from poorer countries, while keeping countries poor through the system of international debt, is likely to be made worse by the G8's approach to climate change. Andrew Simms, policy director of the UK's New Economics Foundation, has described climate change itself as an issue of debt. In a recent book, 'Ecological Debt: The Health of the Planet & the Wealth of Nations', he describes how the G8 countries are using up environmental resources and running up ecological debts. He suggests that while these are different to monetary debts they are just as important. Simms claims that this process - richer countries unfairly consuming and degrading environmental resources that should also belong to poorer countries - poses a bigger threat to global poverty eradication than the foreign debts of poor countries.

Alongside carbon storage, nuclear power is another technology likely to be boosted by the G8 summit. Although the draft of a G8 climate change communique leaked prior to the summit did not indicate a position on nuclear power, both Bush and Blair are known to be keen on this outdated energy source, despite the longer-term problems and the financial drain that it creates.

The tragedy of all this is that it is not impossible to tackle climate change. Far from it. In a report for the International Climate Change Taskforce this year, the UK's Institute for Public Policy Research reminded readers that, according to the G8 Renewables Taskforce, the barriers to the deployment of renewable energy are financial and political, rather than technological. The IPPR report outlined steps that could be taken to de-carbonise the global economy, reconcile climate policy with trade and competitiveness, and make climate policy contribute to poverty eradication. Aimed at a Taskforce co-chaired by former UK Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, this report was framed in language that G8 policy-makers could understand. Elsewhere, commentators on both left and right have suggested that, alongside reduced energy consumption, a wholesale re-think of energy systems - such as a shift from large and remote megapower energy developments to micropower systems sited close to the point of use - is needed, and is possible.

Little will happen at Gleneagles this July in terms of climate change agreements. The US refuses to sign up to a timeline for emission cuts - a basic first step to slow down climate change. Other G8 members may resist further emissions cuts from fear of being out-competed by US companies, which have less restraints on energy use. Meanwhile the G8 summit takes place at a time that may be the endgame for life on planet Earth. Global temperature is changing at a rate never seen before in human history. Species extinction is taking place at a rate never seen before in human history. The last 50 years has seen an upheaval in biodiversity on a scale never seen before in human history. Despite all this, the G8 leaders are likely to congratulate themselves on even getting agreement that yes, something possibly serious really is going on.

_Melanie Jarman writes a column for Red Pepper magazine on climate change-related issues - see www.redpepper.org.uk , then 'index', then 'Temperature Gauge'._

_She edits the supporters' magazine for Campaign Against the Arms Trade, has written books on big business and on global poverty for the 'Citizenship' part of the UK school curriculum, and has worked as an editor for Corporate Watch UK._

Half-Baked and Irrelevant

Alex Doherty — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 12:26:19 +0000

New Years Day sees the launch of the EUs Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the European Communitys mechanism to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to Kyoto Protocol targets. Although the scheme covers industrial emissions rather than those from domestic use or transport, it is important for two main reasons: it demonstrates inter-governmental thinking on tackling climate change, and its used as an excuse for inaction over emissions in other areas. When environment secretary Margaret Becketts response to any questions over transport emissions (aviation emissions in particular) is the ETS could sort it out, then this mechanism has to be worth checking out.

The ETS covers heavy energy-using industries: electricity generators; oil refineries; iron, steel and minerals industries; and paper, pulp and board manufacturers. Companies are given quotas for carbon dioxide emissions; these are divvied up in accordance with National Allocation Plans submitted to the EU by the member states. The UK government has got into a slight pickle over just how many allowances it can get away with, but more on that later.

As of January, when theyre getting down and dirty with their manufacturing each company in the scheme will have to decide just how dirty they want to be, or what level of carbon dioxide they want to emit. For though each will be given a limit for emissions, the potential to trade means that this cap is not the end of the story.

Companies that emit more than their allocation will be able to buy allowances from other companies that made emission cuts. Some may decide it is cheaper to pay the fine for exceeding their allocations, rather than spending on energy efficiency or on buying allowances from elsewhere. The market will make everything work out and emissions in the European Community overall will reduce. Or so the theory goes.

Some critics of the ETS claim that a problem based in a capitalist market (too much pollution from unwise use of resources) cannot be solved by a dose from the same economic system. Principles aside, the thinking behind the set-up of this market is still half-baked.

The National Allocation Plans are collectively meant to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that gets emitted. Theoretically this leads to scarcity in the commodity, giving it a value that has to be factored into business costs, and encouraging companies to look at energy efficiency or ways to cut emissions overall. However, a proposal to include the Kyoto Protocols flexible mechanisms in the scheme would leave the ETS covering an unspecified amount of emissions, bringing scarcity in the market commodity into question. Also, the industries involved in the ETS are not traditional innovators of new technologies (a role more likely to be found in small and medium-sized businesses). They are less likely to see the scheme as an opportunity for investment in more environmentally sensitive technologies and more likely to moan about a perceived inability to compete.

Small and medium businesses will likely not rush to get involved in the scheme as they are likely to lose out in the allocation of emissions allowances. Governments are likely to allocate the greatest number of allowances to larger industries, the industries that currently pollute the most.

In October the UK asked for a revision of its National Allocation Plan. According to the pressure group the Climate Action Network, the increase asked for was equivalent to an amount saved when seven other EU countries cut their own draft plans. Beckett is rapidly losing credibility as her department caves into the Department of Trade and Industry: Friends of the Earth has suggested the UK is now on track for a 14-15 per cent cut in emissions by 2010, rather than the 20 per cent that the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs says it wants achieved. And whatever Becketts hopes on aviation emissions, the earliest that these could be included in the ETS is 2008. In the meantime, a continuing rise in transport emissions makes a mockery of the UKs concern over climate change.

There are economic tools (taxation being one) that could play a role in tackling climate change. The EUs Emissions Trading Scheme, however, is not one of them.