THE BIG CLIMATE DEAL
After the Kyoto conference, politicians created an instrument which was to be the great white hope of climate protection: emissions trading. Ten years later: What has been the outcome?
Can climate change still be stopped? After the Kyoto conference, politicians created an instrument which was to be the great white hope of climate protection: emissions trading. Just 10 short years after the introduction of this measure, however, the balance sheet is more than sobering: the idea that one can save the climate by sticking a price tag on pollution rights and trading them on an exchange as tonnes of CO2 has failed once and for all. In the meantime, the securities are practically unsellable and global CO2 emissions have risen dramatically. The reason for this is that the European Union has undermined its own trading system. Instead of making environmental pollution expensive, it has given away more and more emission rights. The industry has circumvented European climate change legislation and fled to countries that have no CO2 constraints at all.