What our environment craves for is to curtail the amounts of carbon emissions. Heeding to its carbon-less call, Carbon credits were developed by neo-liberal economists to shake hands with the environmentalists swapping environmental policies with economic incentives to battle against pollution.
What are carbon credits?
A grant or sanction certifying a particular company, individual or organisation with the amount of carbon to be emitted is given the name carbon credits. A carbon credit represents the permission to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide or mass of another green house gas with a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 -e) comparable to one tonne of carbon dioxide.
Suppliers or producers who meet the criterion of sequestration (storing carbon by-products instead of simply disposing or emitting) through implementation of conservation practices are often certified with the carbon credits. Thus this sort of financial appreciation leads to the fulfillment of the need of the hour. This concept of carbon credits is surely a boon in such a fishy situation where large scale industries and companies have a chief role in the destruction of our planet along with a leading hand in earning profits.
Another term that comes hand in hand with the generic term ‘carbon credit’ is the Carbon market. These credits need to be authentic, scientifically based and comply with an authoritarian body for these to be traded with confidence. Verification is essential. These tradable carbon credits are then given a monetary value set by the market and can be bought and sold. The owner then has the right to emit 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per credit or trade if not needed that is they have made considerable reductions to meet their targets.
Carbon credits were developed with a piece of mind that thought about a market based approach to reduce the carbon emissions that was in everyone’s reach. Thus supported and supplemented the profits of few small-scale industries with low carbon emissions. Thus it is a step towards economic development to cut down poverty along with environment protection.
Another economic advantage is that the carbon market suggests and promises significant dividends later. Carbon credits being relatively cheap now, are likely to rise. This is what we call Sustainable Development.
Although commented in many movies, everything in the world is being marketed including feelings, but we never imagined an era of our planet being marketed.
An investigation by The Christian Science Monitor and the New England Center for Investigating Reporting has found that individuals and companies leading the world market of offsets with millions of dollars are often making futile promises to the environment of controlling global warming and carbon emissions through carbon credits.
Carbon offsets are nothing but monetary derivatives. I mean this is a pure lunatic idea of selling someone the right to pollute the planet. The selling of carbon credits is simply a fraudulent act against the nature, the environment, the planet. An act tailor made by humans supporting global warming.
The carbon market is in no way reducing the emissions but merely redistributing the right to emit green house gases. For example, I had one credit for reducing my carbon emissions but in turn I sold my credit to a rich company, it increased their carbon emission by one unit which could be lowered down had I not sold my credit to them.
Moreover, in order to gain profits, companies start producing artificial green house gases, recycle and earn carbon credits. These credits are then sold in the carbon market increasing the carbon emissions henceforth.
Carbon trading is a discriminate system where the rich countries continue to pollute by increasing their carbon emissions while earn credits with their small scale inefficient projects.
Carbon trading also witnesses the fruit enjoyed by the middlemen, instead of the producer who contributed towards the betterment of this planet by reducing his emissions. The small and medium companies end up selling almost three quarters of their credits to the middlemen at very low rates due to inadequate knowledge of how to register projects to be eligible for carbon emission certificates and where to sell them. This is where the middle entity earns by misguiding the smaller companies with ridiculously low rates.
We say a dirty fish can ruin the whole pond, similarly we still hope that a clean and beautiful fish can make the pond look beautiful because of itself. And so the aim of this system of carbon trading is recovered with the “Voluntary surrender of units”. There are some god like individuals and companies purchasing tradable carbon credits which could allow emissions but they finally retire or cancel them so that they cannot be used by other emitters to permit their emissions. Thanks to them for saving mankind from total loss of ethics.
Thus we cannot conclude with the carbon credits being a boon or a bane as the carbon credit system is a hope whereas the carbon trading is a completely fraud technique of earning BIG with political interference disturbing the ecological balance. In a political system where money is power, those without it don’t have a voice. It is very rightly quoted “money is what money does”, and we can see it doing wrong to our planet without guilt.
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