- About
- Take Action
- Issues
- Food
- Water
- Common Resources
- ALL ISSUES
- Bottled Water
- Catch Shares
- Climate Change/Rio+20
- Consumer Labels
- Desalination
- Factory Farms
- Factory Fish Farming
- Farm Bill: Better Food Starts Here
- Federal Budget
- Fish
- Food
- Food & Water Justice
- Food Safety
- Fracking
- Genetically Engineered Foods
- GE Salmon
- Global
- Groundwater Protection
- Irradiation
- Nanotechnology
- Radiation Impacts
- Renew America’s Water
- Triclosan (Endocrine Disruptor)
- Water
- Water Conservation
- Water Privatization
- World Water
- Research
- Tools & Resources
- News & Blog
- DONATE
Issue Briefs
Briefs Found: 3April 4, 2013
U.S. Version – Bad Trade: International Forest Offsets and California’s Carbon Market
In November 2012, California’s Air Resources board auctioned off the first round of carbon permits for its voluntary cap-and-trade market, which officially went live on January 1, 2013. This initiative came out of California Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which sets a goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 (a reduction of about 30 percent).
April 3, 2013
EU Version – Bad Trade: International Forest Offsets and the Carbon Market
In recent years, a push has been made to transform environmental protection around the world from regulatory regimes to cap-and-trade schemes. Under cap-and-trade, polluters are offered the opportunity to “pay to pollute,” turning decades of environmental efforts on their head and undermining improvements in environmental health. The linchpin of these cap-and-trade schemes is “offsets,” or credits from outside the regulated industry that polluters can buy in order to keep on polluting.
January 11, 2013
Dividend and Conquer: Cap-and-Dividend and Environmental Betrayal
During the 111th Congress, as legislators debated ways to cope with climate change, the flaws of cap-and-trade approaches doomed the attempt to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act. A final push came in the form of a different bill. Senators Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins introduced S.2877, the “CLEAR Act,” which rested on a principle called cap-and-dividend. Although cap-and-dividend avoids the pitfalls of trading credits and offsets, it still relies on a market solution for pollution that upends our commitment to stop pollution and protect our families and our environment.