I recently took a class at Harvard in (big breath) the International Political Economy of Decarbonization, taught by the fantastic Juergen Braunstein, author of (big breath) Capital Choices: Sectoral Politics and the Variation of Sovereign Wealth. One of the assignments in the class was to write an 800-word op-ed about, well, anything relating to economics, decarbonization, and international politics. I decided to tackle the topic of carbon credits, mostly because the issue was already at the front of my mind. Though my actual, practical approach to the topic is more nuanced, I decided to go all the way with this, just to test my skills. And hey, it worked out: I got an A! So I’m sharing it here now, in hopes that it might spark some discussion, if nothing else.
The idea of carbon credits or emissions trading was a novel concept when it first gained popularity in the 1980s. But at the time, so was the concept of manmade climate change. In the intervening decades, one of those things has emerged as such a powerful influence on human life that no one but Exxon could have predicted it. The other has revealed itself to be little more than a Ponzi scheme that somehow still facilitates a billion dollar marketplace through greenwashing while hindering large-scale decarbonization efforts. The only way to ensure that the planet remains habitable for future generations is for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to rescind all flexible mechanisms for…
