*Keep the Cap, Ditch the Trade* Demo at Carbon Traders Conference

Carbon Trading fails for the following reasons, and more.

Counterfeit carbon credits are everywhere, but impossible to identify. Companies in industrialized countries can receive undeserved carbon credits by merely exaggerating past emission levels in order to falsify present and future emission reductions. Carbon market transactions that utilize falsified emission credits increase emissions.

Offset projects produce emissions. Yes, offset projects (aka “emission reduction projects”) aren’t required to actually reduce emissions. Rather, they are required to produce fewer emissions than would have been produced without the carbon market. Consequently, offset projects include coal, gas and other emission-causing energy projects.

Offset projects often relocate or “leak” emission causing activities rather than prevent them. For example, a project may claim carbon credits from protecting a given area of forest that would have otherwise been cut down (releasing the carbon stored in the trees); however, if loggers simply cut down a different forest instead then emissions have not been reduced.

Carbon trading does nothing to reduce pollution in communities adversely affected by carbon emissions and the other air pollution that almost always accompanies it — in fact, emissions in those communities can actually increase and continue damaging the health of residents.

Perhaps most importantly, carbon trading distracts politicians, media, environmentalists and the general public from real solutions. Knowing this, the Raging Grannies sang to the tune of Frère Jacques:

"Who's Greenwashing, who's greenwashing, here inside, here inside? You say 'carbon trading', we say it's greenwashing, you can't hide, you can't hide!"