I’ve started this blog in order to prevent brain atrophy during my seemingly never ending job search. My mission is to collect all the things I find interesting in one place and to provide my own commentary on the issues. Hopefully there are people out there who find the same things interesting and to whom this will be a resource. For my first post, I’m posting a short writing sample I did last October.
Even in an age where a penny candy now costs 6o cents, a billion dollars is still quite a bit of money. In this case, one billion dollars is the amount of the largest carbon emissions transaction to date, finalized at the end of August. The World Bank and other European and Asian companies came together to purchase the $1 billion in carbon credits from two Chinese chemical manufacturers. These two Jiangsu province-based companies will reduce their emissions of HFC-23, a gas that traps more heat than carbon dioxide, by 10,000 tons. This is a major use of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, where industrialized nations can meet their emissions targets by funding clean projects in developing countries. While there has been a recent surge in projects under the CDM, this one stands out for more than its staggering dollar amount. China is already the world’s second largest producer of greenhouse gases and its economy is still growing at a rapid rate. Reducing emissions in China as it grows prevents it from developing a heavily polluting modern infrastructure which will then have to reduce its emissions at a greater cost. It might be argued that the CDM is an out for companies in Kyoto-bound countries who are dragging their heels on reducing their emissions, but the investment in countries who are not Kyoto signatories is crucial in the long run, since that is where the most growth in emissions is occurring. The CDM was a way to close the Kyoto loophole of exempting developing nations, namely by having rich countries pay for reductions that the poorer countries simply could not afford, and it seems to be living up to its promise. The money will be put into the Chinese government’s Clean Development Fund, which is earmarked for energy efficiency and renewable energy targets.
