Pollution credits in the form of carbon offsets continue to fictionalize capital. As valorization, corporate greenwashing will continue as long as the image of free-market solutions implies that capitalism will solve the climate crisis. Similarly The US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 relies on incentivizing capital subsidies rather than directing national industrial policy. The corruption of the process featured the role of Senator Manchin in pork barreling marginal changes in industrial tech. Net Zero is sufficiently vague to assign solving the climate crisis to a median over 27 years.
Right-wing fear mongering now seizes upon more absurd tropes like framing the 15 minute City as a ‘deep state’ conspiracy theory in order to prevent government planning and scare the populace. Sustainability questions whether policy (a) the level of production (and consumption) should be consistent with the demands of the physical environment; and (b) locally- or community-based production should be encouraged.
As Michael Hudson has suggested: The result is that today’s economy is burdened with property and financial claims that Marx and other critics deemed ‘fictitious’ a proliferation of financial overhead in the form of interest and dividends, fees and commissions, exorbitant management salaries, bonuses and stock options, and ‘capital’ gains (mainly debt-leveraged land-price gains). And to cap matters, new financial modes of exploiting labour have been innovated. The future markets for carbon offsets are no different especially in the capture of rents.
There are three basic types of carbon credits:
- Those from reduced emissions (typically energy efficiency measures)
- Removed emissions (carbon capture and planting forests)
- And avoided emissions (for example refraining from cutting down rainforests).
Carbon offset markets have been repeatedly exposed as fraudulent, ineffective schemes that do little to reduce emissions. Carbon dioxide removal is similarly proven to fail. Direct air capture produces between 2.2-3.5 tons of CO2 equivalent emissions for every ton captured; while an Illinois ethanol carbon capture facility often touted as proof of concept has increased emissions since installing the technology in 2017.
www.commondreams.org/…
Global Carbon Offset and Carbon Credit Trading Service Market is expected to grow at a significant rate of around 19% during the forecast period 2022-2028.
Offset/Carbon Credit Market Size Projected to Reach $1,602.7 Billion by 2028
Morgan Stanley says carbon-offset market is expected to surge from $2B ➡️$250B by 2050
One benefit of my study is that the profitable opportunity presented to firms was available to all firms and existed because of externally imposed regulations.
The paper then first examines the extent to which firms exploit this profitable opportunity. I further characterize which firms exploit this opportunity the most, comparing single-country firms against multi-country firms, and firms that have operations with market institutions relevant for the EU ETS (i.e. carbon markets) with firms that do not. I also characterize the temporal behavior of firm exploitation of the arbitrage opportunity. I find that there is significant heterogeneity among firms in the exploitation of the
arbitrage opportunity, and that operating structure, regulatory stringency, and embeddedness with important market institutions, are important factors influencing a firm’s likelihood to exploit the opportunity.
www.brookings.edu/...
Reduction claims themselves are an unfortunate commodity speculation possibility. Brad DeLong says the faith in markets will continue this blinkered ideology.
The essay’s observation that subsidies could “boost investment in deprived areas in the short term” but also “entrench wasteful and distorting lobbying” in the long run is similarly equivocal. The underlying claim appears to be that while market failures caused by externalities are bad, the potential consequences of government policies aimed at correcting them are worse. Americans’ safest bet is simply to keep faith with the market.
The Economist’s argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of US history. The American economic tradition is rooted in the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, who recognized the need for a developmental state and the dangers of rent-seeking.
To be sure, it has been 70 years since Eisenhower’s presidency, and much of America’s state capacity has been hollowed out during the long neoliberal era that began with the election of Ronald Reagan. But the laissez-faire policies that were woefully inadequate for the mass-production economy of the 1950s are an even worse fit for the biotech and IT-based economy of the future. Rather than reject Biden’s industrial policies, Americans should embrace them. To quote Margaret Thatcher, there is no alternative.
www.project-syndicate.org/...?
Along with other legislation passed under the Biden administration, including the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the IRA offers consumers and producers payments and incentives to transition away from fossil fuels and to buy or manufacture goods in the United States. This legislation aims to foster a manufacturing renaissance that helps rebuild communities across the United States left behind by globalization, in turn hoping to create good jobs, nurture competitive industries, and facilitate the thorough decarbonization of the U.S. economy. An emphasis on public investment also helps guide the administration’s climate policy past the roadblocks of political opposition. To avoid the antiquated Senate filibuster, climate legislation has to take a spending-focused approach. The Supreme Court, now dominated by conservatives, has struck down many forms of regulation, but it has never struck down a piece of federal spending legislation.
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The Biden administration’s vision is laudable. Left to the whims of the market, green technologies and energy would probably not grow as rapidly and at the necessary scale needed to meaningfully combat climate change. Washington is seeking to create a global economy that differs in important ways from that which prevailed before the pandemic: one that uses less carbon and is more dynamic and more equal. Government investment is necessary to steer the private sector and to move the entire world economy out of the secular stagnation and rising inequality that plagued much of the last two decades. But the United States cannot engineer such change on its own. Getting Europe on board will be a crucial first step toward forging a stronger international order and ultimately decarbonizing the world.
www.foreignaffairs.com/...
The IRA is expected to advance decarbonization in many ways, including:
- Driving more demand for electric vehicles (EVs), low-carbon materials/construction and clean technologies
- Increasing growth of renewable energy through extensions of tax credits and increases in funding
- Spurring innovation through research and development (R&D) of clean technology and low-carbon materials
- Creating demand for low-carbon products in construction of federal buildings and transportation projects
www.pwc.com/…
With billions in climate funding, the Inflation Reduction Act is set to provide a significant boost to America’s clean energy plans. According to an assessment by the Department of Energy, the IRA could help reduce economy-wide GHG emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, marking a major milestone on the road to net-zero.
decarbonization.visualcapitalist.com/...
QUALIFYING ADVANCED ENERGY PROJECT CREDIT
The first notice establishes the expanded Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit program under Section 48C of the Internal Revenue Code. This program renews and expands an investment tax credit initially included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The program provides incentives for clean energy property manufacturing and recycling, industrial decarbonization, and critical materials processing, refining, and recycling. The notice provides a broad range of examples of projects eligible to apply for an investment tax credit of up to 30 percent, including manufacturing of fuel cells and components for geothermal electricity and hydropower, equipment for carbon capture, and critical minerals processing facilities.
The Inflation Reduction Act provided $10 billion in new funding for the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit program. In the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress required that at least $4 billion be reserved for projects in communities with closed coal mines or retired coal-fired power plants.
home.treasury.gov/...
That’s not how the conspiracy theorists see it, however. They regard the 15 Minute City as yet more sinister evidence of “The Great Reset” – a far-right conspiracy theory that the Covid pandemic was orchestrated by a cabal of politicians and business leaders through the World Economic Forum to control the global population.
And with civic leaders as geographically distant from each other as Paris, Melbourne and Portland, Oregon all lending their support to this new urban ideal, this conspiracy theory has inevitably gone global.
One particular discussion about personalised “carbon trackers” at the WEF in Davos in 2022 has been seized upon by some conspiracy-minded Youtubers as evidence that what’s really at stake is individual freedom.
Would it matter if these people discovered an article on the WEF website that was actually critical of 15-minute cities? Probably not, because many who hold these views seem oblivious to facts.