Carbon Trading – A Profitable CSR Initiative for Reducing Economic Asymmetries among Nations

Abstract

Another international climate change summit, this time in the Qatari city of Doha, has concluded without a binding agreement reached on reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The failure of 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) was anticipated beforehand by everyone involved, and met with widespread indifference on the part of international media. Since, the debacle at Copenhagen summit in December 2009—which broke up without agreement on a post-Kyoto climate treaty amid bitter conflicts between the major powers — annual UN-sponsored climate summits have been restricted to negotiating various secondary issues, unrelated to the question of binding emissions targets. Heads of government have not gathered to discuss the issue in past three years, leaving junior ministers and diplomats to head negotiating teams at the subsequent summits at Cancun, Durban, and Doha. The inability of world leaders to even meet to discuss the climate change crisis, represents a devastating indictment of capitalist system. Overwhelming scientific evidence points to the serious threat posed to world's population by excessive emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The forecasts made in first UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, in 1990, have proven accurate. “We've sat back and watched the two decades unfold and warming has progressed at a rate consistent with those projections,” Matt England, of the University of New South Wales' Climate Change Research Centre, told Australia's ABC Radio. “The analysis is very clear that, IPCC projections are coming true. And at the moment, we are tracking at high end in terms of our emissions, and so all of the projections that we look to at the moment are those high end forecasts.” However, the researchers believe that the conclusions will have a broader implication, that will surely help developing nations in not only reaching, the much sought economic integration among them and reducing Economic Asymmetries with developed nations, but also in reducing the emission levels to save our planet. So, if a revolution has to be there in International trade and globalization, be it the Green Way!