The “New” Carbon Economy: What’s New?

Introduction We now have what is commonly called a carbon economy. However, it is in fact made up of several, increasingly inter-connected, carbon markets. It takes different forms in different parts of the world, but includes systems of emissions trading (in the EU, some states in the USA and emerging schemes in cities, such as Montreal), and the buying and selling of offsets through United Nations-controlled “compliance” markets, most notably though the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) created by the Kyoto Protocol, as well as through “voluntary” markets. The carbon economy has had a turbulent history: its monetary value was affected by global financial meltdown, which also suppressed levels of demand for carbon credits, and its legitimacy questioned amid claims of climate fraud, “toxic carbon”, and acts of (neo)colonial dispossession (Bachram 2004; Friends of the Earth 2009; Lohmann 2005, 2006). And yet the importance of the carbon economy should not be underestimated. With the CDM, for example, Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) amounting to more than 2.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent are expected to be produced in the first commitment