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Many believe economic growth is incompatible with ecological
preservation. Green Capital challenges this argument by shifting
our focus away from the scarcity of raw materials and toward the
deterioration of the great natural regulatory functions (such as
the climate system, the water cycle, and biodiversity). Although we
can find substitutes for scarce natural resources, we cannot
replace a natural regulatory system, which is incredibly complex.
It is therefore critical that we introduce a new price into the
economy that measures the costs of damage to these regulatory
functions. This change in perspective justifies such innovations as
the carbon tax, which addresses not the scarcity of carbon but the
inability of the atmosphere to absorb large amounts of carbon
without upsetting the climate system. Brokering a sustainable peace
between ecology and the economy, Green Capital describes a range of
valuation schemes and their contribution to the goals of green
capitalism, proposing a new approach to natural resources that
benefits both businesses and the environment.
Since the publication of the Stern Review, economists have started
to ask more normative questions about climate change. Should we act
now or tomorrow? What is the best theoretical carbon price to reach
long-term abatement targets? How do we discount the long-term costs
and benefits of climate change? This provocative book argues that
these are the wrong sorts of questions to ask because they don't
take into account the policies that have already been implemented.
Instead, it urges us to concentrate on existing policies and tools
by showing how the development of carbon markets could dramatically
reduce world greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, triggering policies to
build a new low-carbon energy system while restructuring the way
agriculture interacts with forests. This provides an innovative new
perspective on how a post-Kyoto international climate regime could
emerge from agreements between the main GHG emitters capping their
emissions and building an international carbon market.
The European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the
world's largest market for carbon and the most significant
multinational initiative ever taken to mobilize markets to protect
the environment. It will be an important influence on the
development and implementation of trading schemes in the US, Japan,
and elsewhere. However, as is true of any pioneering public policy
experiment, this scheme has generated much controversy. Pricing
Carbon provides the first detailed description and analysis of the
EU ETS, focusing on the first 'trial' period of the scheme
(2005-7). Written by an international team of experts, it allows
readers to get behind the headlines and come to a better
understanding of what was done and what happened based on a
dispassionate, empirically based review of the evidence. This book
should be read by anyone who wants to know what happens when
emissions are capped, traded, and priced.
Since the publication of the Stern Review, economists have started
to ask more normative questions about climate change. Should we act
now or tomorrow? What is the best theoretical carbon price to reach
long-term abatement targets? How do we discount the long-term costs
and benefits of climate change? This provocative book argues that
these are the wrong sorts of questions to ask because they don't
take into account the policies that have already been implemented.
Instead, it urges us to concentrate on existing policies and tools
by showing how the development of carbon markets could dramatically
reduce world greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, triggering policies to
build a new low-carbon energy system while restructuring the way
agriculture interacts with forests. This provides an innovative new
perspective on how a post-Kyoto international climate regime could
emerge from agreements between the main GHG emitters capping their
emissions and building an international carbon market.
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