Annie Leonard, the creator of “The Story of Stuff” has released a 9-minute animated film on carbon trading. Employing the same urgent honesty that made The Story of Stuff so successful – it recently passed 9 million views – The Story of Cap & Trade uses flash animation to voice Annie’s critique of this proposed emission-reduction solution currently under consideration around the world.

“It turns out that climate and consumption are actually the same issue: You see, most of the greenhouse gases countries emit come from our materials economy: the way we make, use, transport, and throw away all the stuff in our lives. As Boston College professor … Juliet Schor said ‘Global consumerism devours resources like there’s no tomorrow. And unless we address how much we consume, we won’t succeed in averting disastrous climate change.’ ” Annie Leonard

Annie is quite critical of, and points to, the ‘devils in the details’ in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake carbon offsets and, most importantly, distraction from the significant tasks at hand in tackling the climate crisis.

The Story of Cap & Trade is certainly worth viewing now – as it takes a provocative and humorous look at cap and trade, the leading climate solution under consideration in Copenhagen (COP15), the US and Australia.

Whilst several eminent luminaries (such as Annie and James Hansen) have recently spoken out against cap-and-trade as an effective method to reduce carbon emissions, there are some who disagree with Annie et al. One such is Marc Gunther, a respected journalist and speaker whose focus is business and sustainability, who wrote in his recent blog:

“What’s more, while Leonard effectively highlights the flaws of cap and trade, the policy debate around whether it will work, whether it has worked in Europe, who will benefit, whether a carbon tax would be better, why offsets are essential to any cap-and-trade scheme (or not) is obviously much more complicated than any 10-minute video or 800-word blogposting can capture. … For what it’s worth, I believe cap-and-trade can be made to work despite its dizzying complexity and the risks of gaming the system–although I’d prefer to see a cap-and-dividend approach where the proceeds from auctioning permits are returned to consumers or even a revenue-neutral carbon tax.”

Personally, I am in no doubt that this criticism of cap-and-trade will simply add ever-more complexity and point-of-division to the debate over how to reduce the world’s emissions! Though it may help some Australians understand the Rudd government’s proposed ETS. It still remains: How will we ever reach any global consensus and actually attack the real goal – to start reducing?!

What are your thoughts?

Resources:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/blog/

http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/index.php

http://www.climatebiz.com/blog/2009/12/02/annie-leonards-sharp-critique-cap-and-trade

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-12-01-annie-leonard-misses-the-mark-her-new-video-story-cap-and-trade

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/13/consumed4_pm_2/

Written by Suze Chalmers