The EU ETS: Emphasizing Economic Efficiency over Socio-Ecological Wellbeing

The world’s foremost authoritative body on climate science,

the International Panel on Climate Change, declared in its 2013

summary report for policymakers with abundant clarity: “The

atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice

have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of

greenhouse gases have increased...it is extremely likely that human

influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming

since the mid-20th century”. Such an unambiguous acknowledgement

of humanity’s impacts on the seemingly impermeable and complex

climate system have spurred new international statutes and

initiatives for the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change

such as the renowned Kyoto Protocol and its controversial policy

by-product, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. While notably

ambitious in its scope and aims, the EU ETS is nonetheless

fraught with significant deficiencies, namely, the nefarious role

of power dynamics in market structures whereby a few large

corporations wield considerable political and economic power, its

placing of social and environmental wellbeing into the volatile

hands of the international market, and the more fundamental issue

of its attempt to commodify nature which ultimately diverts

attention from issues of environmental sustainability to more

predominant goals of profit maximization.

Legal & Historical Foundations:

The Kyoto Protocol, born out of the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change and adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in

December 1997, entered into force in early 2005 as world’s the

first international collaborative approach to combating climate

change. Kyoto’s primary goal has been for the combined efforts of

its member states to gradually reduce and stabilize global

greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in order to

“prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate

system” (Art. 2, UNFCCC), with the critical threshold set at a 2-

degree rise in global temperatures1, after which point

considerable climatic volatility is predicted to occur (IPCC).

Most significantly, however, Kyoto serves as a key legal

framework underlying subsequent initiatives such as the EU ETS

1 However, a 2012 World Bank report stresses that, “as global warming approaches and exceeds 2-degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggeringnonlinear tipping elements, such as the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to rapid sea-level rise and large-scale Amazon dieback.” This has led to much contention over the 2-degree threshold, particularly by low-lying island states, prompting many to claim that it’s more a political device to safeguard economic growth than a measure to protect life (Klein, 2014).

(UNFCCC), with its first commitment period spanning from 2008

through 20122, during which time Annex I parties3 must

“individually or jointly not exceed their assigned amounts… with

a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at

least 5 percent below 1990 levels” (Art. 3). In order to account

for the varied economic, social, historical, infrastructural,

technological, and political circumstances of the different

Parties, Article 3 emphasizes that, “…a certain degree of flexibility

shall be allowed by the Conference of the Parties” in their

emissions reductions strategies, thus laying the groundwork for

the notion of an emissions trading scheme to emerge as a viable

option and, as will be further elaborated, one that would

2 Phase two is set to run from 2013 through 2020; comprised of a slightly different set of parties, it requires members to reduce GHG emissions by 18% below 1990 levels (UNFCCC).33. “Annex I Parties: “include the industrialized countries that were members of the OECD (Organisation for Co-operation and Development) in 1992, plus countries with economies in transition (the EIT Parties), including the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European Economic States (UNFCCC).” These countriesare under the commitment of returning either individually or jointly totheir 1990 levels of greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000 (IPCC Glossary). Non-Annex I Parties: “mostly developing countries. Certain groups of developing countries are recognized by the Convention as being especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change, including countries with low-lying coastal areas and those prone to desertification and drought (UNFCCC).”

eventually become the European Union’s primary tactic for meeting

Kyoto’s emissions reduction targets.

Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol provides further intimations

as to the intended structure and nature of an emissions trading

scheme as a flexible, market-based approach to achieving

greenhouse gas emissions reductions, albeit through traditionally

nebulous legal phrasing: “The Conference of the Parties shall

define the relevant principles, modalities, rules and guidelines,

in particular for verification, reporting and accountability for

emissions trading”. However, the Article goes on to note that,

“Any such trading shall be supplemental to domestic actions for the

purpose of meeting quantified emission limitation and reduction

commitments under that Article”, a key stipulation as it places

emphasis on the importance of mitigation efforts from various

sectors of society in order to effectively address the issue of

climate change, while admonishing against an exclusive reliance

on top-down approaches. Perhaps the most widely entertained and

crucial example of a domestic activity includes substantial

investments in the development of renewable energy technologies

in order to help wean economies and national infrastructures off

of their heavy fossil fuel dependencies (Prins & Rayner, 2007).

EU ETS Structure & Aims:

Kyoto’s gradual transformation into a “trading mechanism”

(Spash, 2010) culminated in the emergence of the 2003 EU ETS

Directive, which introduced with hopeful ambition its aims of

establishing a “Community-wide emissions trading scheme by 2005”

and “achieving an 8% reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases

by 2008 to 2012 compared to 1990 levels, and that, in the longer-

term, global emissions of greenhouse gases will need to be

reduced by approximately 70% compared to 1990 levels

(ec.europa.eu)”. The first of its kind ever to be fully devised

and implemented, the expansive EU ETS covers emissions from over

11,000 power and manufacturing stations across the EU, as well as

aviation operations between most of the countries. It is divided

into four trading periods: the first spans from 2005 through

2007, the second from 2008 through 2012, the third from 2013

through 2020, and the final from 2021 through 20284. In its

entirety, the scheme is designed to cover a sizable 45% of the

EU’s total annual emissions (ec.europa.eu), yet, as alluded to

previously, is intended to serve as a supplemental strategy 4 Note how the directive closely mirrors the targets and structure originally set out by the Kyoto Protocol.

alongside other efforts in the EU’s grand climate change

mitigation design that should, in aggregate, aim to address the

whole of its emissions.

Despite the scheme’s decided complexity and virtual

intractability, The European Commission’s ETS Factsheet provides

a fairly concise synopsis of what emissions trading is and how it

is supposed to function: “The system works by putting a limit (or

‘cap’) on overall emissions5 from high-emitting industry sectors

which is reduced each year (by roughly 1.74%). Within this limit,

companies can buy and sell emission allowances (or ‘pollution

permits’, a limited number of which are allocated freely to

industries) as needed. This ‘cap-and-trade’ approach gives

companies the flexibility they need to cut their emissions in the

most cost-effective way.” In theory, as demand for permits begins to

outstrip their supply, the price per permit should rise, in turn

making fossil fuel combustion and its attendant pollution

5 GHG’s covered by the scheme include: “Carbon dioxide (CO2) fromPower and heat generation, Energy-intensive industry sectors including oil refineries, steel works and production of iron, aluminium, metals, cement, lime, glass, ceramics, pulp, paper, cardboard, acids and bulk organic chemicals, Civil aviation, Nitrous oxide (N2O) from production of nitric adipic, glyoxal andglyoxlic acids, Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) from aluminium production(ec.europa.eu).”

increasingly unfeasible from an economic standpoint and thus

encouraging businesses to invest in comparatively affordable

green and renewable technologies. However, the wording and its

emphasis on cost-effectiveness rather than on methods that are

first and foremost socially and environmentally beneficial is

worth noting as it designates from its inception the primacy of

economic above other considerations

The flexibility mechanisms principle that characterizes the

EU ETS, in addition to allowing parties of varying backgrounds

considerable latitude for adjusting to and incorporating the

scheme’s requirements, is also designed to incite cooperation

from businesses and industries in the global fight against

climate change. Participation is made attractive to industrial

and financial sectors through the economic incentives provided by

a market-based approach wherein businesses are free to buy and

sell pollution permits as desired. However, not all is free

reign; restrictions are inevitably factored in, as the scheme is

ultimately intended to gradually reduce GHG emissions by

rendering fossil fuels more expensive and eventually “pricing

fossil fuels out of the market” (Glover, 2009), thereby shifting

the focus towards renewables and incremental infrastructural

change. Thus, “Allowances can be used only once. Companies have

to surrender allowances for every tonne of CO2 (or the equivalent

amount of N2O or PFCs) covered by the EU ETS that they emitted in

the previous year: heavy fines are imposed if they do not hand in

enough allowances to match their emissions” (ec.europa.eu).

Despite the restrictions embedded in the scheme, as will be

elucidated in the succeeding pages, the EU ETS has gone down a

starkly different path from that which was originally intended,

casting considerable doubt on the scheme’s viability as an

effective mechanism for reducing anthropogenic GHG emissions and

as a long-term strategy for the prevention of catastrophic

climate change.

A critical Assessment of the EU ETS:

The first period of the EU ETS, characterized as the

“learning by doing (UNFCCC)” phase, concluded less than favorably

in December 2007 as some rather problematic inconsistencies were

brought to light. The European Commission itself elucidates on

the main drawback of the first phase as follows: “the number of

allowances, based on estimated needs, turned out to be excessive;

consequently the price of first-period allowances falls to zero

in 2007”. It is worth noting that Phase I was somewhat naively

predicated on the “self-reported emissions estimates” of

companies, therefore leaving ample room for self-interested

misrepresentation of data or, more simply, overoptimistic

prognoses (Spash, 2010). A 2009 article featured in The Guardian,

written by Julian Glover, speechwriter for British Prime Minister

David Cameron, brilliantly and succinctly encapsulates the

environmentally problematic effects of over-allocation that

plagued the first ETS phase, noting that, “Scarcity and

speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone

has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse…The price

falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The

result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change

but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the

steelmaker Corus”. Indeed, not only did emissions continue to

rise during the first ETS phase6, major industries actually

profited as costs for the construction of the carbon market were

largely deflected to consumers, who were further encumbered by

the burden of increased energy bills (FoEEurope, 2010).

6 Amounts of CO2 emitted by major European plants covered under the scheme increased by 0.4 percent in 2006 and by 0.7 percent in 2007 (Spash, 2010).

The second ETS phase (2008 – 2012), while failing to

adequately address the issue of over-allocation7 despite a

reduction in the number of allowances by 6.5% (EC, 2013),

introduced a host of new limitations that were further compounded

by the 2008 global financial crisis, thus bringing the volatility

of the market and its profound ineffectiveness as a tool in

stemming environmental decline into clear view. As renowned

author and social activist, Naomi Klein (2014) notes, “After a

rare decline in 2009 due to the financial crisis, global

emissions surged by a whopping 5.9 percent in 2010- the largest

absolute increase since the Industrial Revolution” (18). The

brief declines in emissions that preceded their resurgence as

global “business as usual” trajectories once again picked up

speed were not the result of the sudden and long-awaited success

of the EU ETS but instead solely due to economic downturn which

dramatically reduced demand and output across various sectors.

However, the reduced demand generated by the financial crisis

dealt yet another blow to the EU trading scheme’s potential

7 A 2010 Friends of the Earth Europe Report on the EU ETS cites a campaigning and research organization, Sandbag, which estimates that the sheer overabundance of spare permits will allow EU industrial and power sector emissions to grow unchecked until 2016.

viability and thus to overall global climatic stability as it

resulted in a further surplus of unused permits (EC, 2013), once

again depreciating the price of carbon and designating the use of

fossil fuels as the rational economic choice.

One additional device designed as a supplementary measure to

the ETS for reducing global emissions is the technically and

scientifically dubious notion of emissions offsets, a similar

development of the Kyoto Protocol’s “flexibility mechanisms”

policy tradition. Emissions offsets are additional pollution

permission credits (termed ‘certified emission reduction, CER8,

and ‘emission reduction unit, ERU) that can be bought from

countries that fall outside of Kyoto’s range, typically those in

the third world including in South America and most of Africa,

upon engagement in emissions reductions and/or carbon-sink-

enhancing projects such as reforestation. The purported dual aims

of emissions offsets projects include providing polluting

industries of the industrialized north with greater flexibility

in meeting their targets as well as support for sustainable

development projects in the host countries. Such projects thus

fall under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM, Art. 12) and8 One CER is equal to one metric tonne of CO2-equivalent (Spash, 2010).

Joint Implementation (JI, Art. 10) initiatives (Fern). To begin

with, the first and perhaps most severe problem with the system

of emissions offsets is exemplified by the simple fact that they

do not require polluting sources to actually reduce their

emissions; indeed, as inevitably occurs under the ETS, industrial

polluters are ultimately allowed to continue emitting, albeit

with the vague additional stipulation that they must offset the

increased emissions elsewhere (Spash, 2010).

Other issues with emissions offsets that severely undermine

its logic of equating source-related harms with sink-related

goods (Spash, 2010) include the scientifically tenuous notion of

‘offsetting’, as carbon sinks such as forests are complex biotic

communities whose carbon-sequestration capacities vary

considerably according to geographical variations, climatic

conditions, management and land-use practices, and the often

dubious and unreliable emissions monitoring techniques employed

(FERN). Such complications in turn fuel the scheme’s

indeterminate claim of additionality, or “the supposed net

reduction of emissions delivered by a project” which ultimately

can “never be reliably calculated (or) verified as it involves

calculations based on a hypothetical volume of emissions”

(Naughten, 12). In theory, pollution source offsets should result

in real emissions reductions in addition to those that would have

occurred otherwise. Instead, as elucidated by FERN (2010), “A

realistic assessment of approved CDM projects reveals that

between 30 and 50 per cent of claimed emissions reductions are

not additional at all” (12). Most disconcerting, however, is that

the emissions offsets scheme often leads to the scouring of the

global South by wealthy northern corporations for forest

resources that can be translated into profitable carbon credits,

often at the expense of grave socio-ecological injustices such as

the displacement of indigenous peoples and other vulnerable

groups from formal home lands newly designated as ‘carbon sinks’

(Klein, 2014).

In addition to the combined effects of market volatility,

over-allocation of permits, and problematic loophole devices such

as emissions offsets is the notion of ‘permit banking’ that came

into effect during Phase II of the EU ETS. Recalling that permits

are only allowed to be used once, EU ETS statutes essentially

override this restriction by introducing permit banking, whereby

unused permits from Phase II can be set aside or ‘banked’ for use

in later trading periods (FoEEurope, 2010). In effect, industries

that have accumulated unused permits are legally allowed to

continue emitting, further exacerbating climate change and

violating the one goal that the EU ETS is ostensibly designed to

accomplish, namely, the reduction of anthropogenic emissions. In

order to place this absurd mismatch between policy and

environmental effects into perspective, consider the European

Commission’s own account of the scenario in question: “between

2013 and 2020 and despite the linear reduction of the ETS cap, no

absolute emission reductions in the ETS need to take place due to

the availability of a large buffer of allowances” from phase two

in addition to “unused international credits” (EC, 2010). Naomi

Klein comically muses: “Preliminary data show that in 2013,

global carbon dioxide emissions were 61 percent higher than they

were in 1990…indeed, the only thing rising faster than our

emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them” (11). In

light of such glaring contradictions, it becomes apparent that

the stabilization of GHG emissions for social and environmental

wellbeing remains, as of yet, a distant objective.

A final design flaw of the EU ETS, and of economic policy

approaches more generally, is their apparent obliviousness to

issues of power dynamics in market structures. As Spash notes,

“In basic economic theory firms are price takers with no market

power. In practice most markets involve mixed structures, often

with considerable concentrations of power amongst some large

corporations and multinationals”, particularly in the energy and

transport sectors (176). Such power differentials translate into

engagement in corrupt activities by groups that have significant

economic stakes in a prosperous global fossil fuel economy such

as price manipulation and, more deleteriously, donations of

millions of dollars to the climate change denial movement in

order to manufacture doubt about climate change and its much

needed policy interventions, as they threaten powerful vested

interests (Klein, 2014)9. Conversely, as previously alluded to,

many corporations in fact relish participation in flexible

permit-trading schemes as they harbor the potential for the

reaping of substantial financial rewards. Spash recounts the

shocking example of Europe’s largest emitter, the German power 9 The American libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, at one pointreceived 40% of its income from oil companies and has received funding from fossil fuel giants such as EcconMobil and the Koch family foundations (Klein, 2014).

company RWE, which, under the EU ETS received approximately $6.4

billion during the first three years of the scheme’s operation

(Kantner 2008) and an astonishing 1.8 billion by billing its

customers for permits it had received free of charge (Spash,

2010).

The limitations of Efficiency: Quantitative versus Qualitative

Concerns

Clive Spash’s The Brave New World of Carbon Trading features a

critical examination of the EU ETS and the significant gaps

between the scheme’s theoretical intentions and how it has

functioned in practice. Continuing along previous lines of

analysis, Spash ruminates on the problematic effects of an

ostensibly “environmental” scheme designed with economic

efficiency as its guiding principle, epitomized by the ability

for polluters to trade their pollution permits: “rather than a

polluter having no choice but to reduce pollution in line with

their existing permissions, they can alternatively seek to obtain

more permissions on the open market” (173). Problems that arise

with this sort of market policy tool include the questionable

ability for industries to be able to establish with any degree of

certainty the precise costs of controlling their emissions and an

inaccurate conceptualization of the market as an entirely stable

and predictable entity. However, more profoundly, the trading

mechanism that is the crux of the EU ETS, by allowing industries

to acquire more permits in order to increase their GHG emissions,

completely violates the scheme’s purported purpose of curbing

anthropogenic impacts on the global climate system in favor of

granting virtually unhampered industry flexibility.

The limited focus on economic efficiency that pervades the

structure of the EU ETS as well as the activities and maxims of

major industry is fundamentally flawed in that it obscures all

other concerns that are just as crucial if not more so, such as

long-term environmental sustainability, social equity, and

qualitative indicators of value such as diverse and resilient

ecosystems. Spash describes the limited fixation on quantitative

efficiency in policy, legal, and economic discourse as a “narrow,

professionally defined, technical matter, which then…negates

other concerns”; yet such concerns are often treated as secondary

to considerations regarding economic efficiency and profits, as

thus far evinced by the EU ETS. Scottish academic, Alastair

McIntosh, poignantly remarks along similar lines that, “In terms

of how GNP measures things, the floods (from a world with more

frequent and severe climatic perturbations due to runaway climate

change) might not even be a bad thing. Each of those insurance

claims generates economic activity! We may be more miserable, but

on paper, we’re richer! Never mind the human cost” (98). It

appears that, somewhere amidst the frenzied enthusiasm for

bringing businesses on board the issue of climate change,

financial and economic concerns have taken center stage,

obscuring more pressing maters such as the need to secure a

viable and sustainable future.

Commodifying Nature:

Anthropologist Sian Sullivan provides an illuminating

examination of the deleterious consequences of ascribing a

monetary value to the natural world and its component parts, such

as carbon, and in effect reducing them to mere commodities to be

bought and sold in the global market. One especially telling

example is London’s Europe Climate Exchange, which Sullivan

describes as the world’s leading marketplace for the exchange of

tradable carbon credits, and where “a veritable ecosystem of

economists, stockbrokers and financial advisors has emerged to

service trade in this new commodity (carbon)”. Sullivan notes that

the organization’s website “provides very little information

connecting this exchange with environmental impacts through the

reduction of atmospheric CO2”, which seems to imply that, “this

is a product with a great deal to do with trade, finance and

profit, operating at a rather large remove from the materiality

of global climate and ecosystems” (2009). Indeed, with the EU

ETS’ primary legacies thus far exhibiting record profits by

industries and substantially increased emissions, the utilization

of market mechanisms in order to prevent environmental

degradation in the form of climate change has not only proved

wholly unsuccessful but in fact entirely counterproductive. What

seems to have occurred is the emergence of another market for

trading, speculating, and accumulating profits, not an ingenious

new system of environmental monitoring and protection.

Sullivan goes on to explain that, “Many forms of value,

appreciation, understanding and experience of non-human worlds

simply are incommensurable with economic pricing mechanisms”.

Alastair McIntosh similarly notes that, “…most of the real costs

(of climate change) can never be quantified in money terms- what

price a human life, an entire species, or even an island nation

or river delta where human settlement might be lost forever?”10

(45) In other words, the incommensurability is that between

qualitative and quantitative dimensions of value. From the

perspectives of classical economic theory and corporations such

as Shell that profit off of the “profligate burning of fossil

fuels” (Klein, 2014), the overriding objective is quantitative

gains in the form of financial profits, which may enhance GDP

while wreaking extensive social and ecological harm.11 As

McIntosh, Sullivan, and Klein each denote, exclusively

quantitative measures of ‘wealth’ and ‘growth’ obscure true

value, which is what the EU ETS inadvertently accomplishes by

attempting to commodify nature through carbon trading, an

approach that has merely served to increase profits rather than

stem the tide of environmental decline.

Sullivan cogently concludes, with striking pertinence to the

EU ETS’ guiding rationale, that, “We are critically impoverished

10 Indeed, what of the small island nation, the Maldives, 80% of which rests less than one meter above average sea level? With even the conservative estimates of future sea level rise, this nation could soonbe but a distant memory (Global Climate Change Alliance).11 In classical economic theory, the environment is a ‘free good’, and thus, as British economist, E.F Schumacher states, and as evinced by enhanced pollution and emissions levels with simultaneous increases in financial profits under the EU ETS: “an activity can be economic although it plays hell with the environment” (Small is Beautiful, 1973).

as human beings if the best we can come up with is money as the

mediator of our relationships with the non-human world”. The

prominent British economist, E.F Schumacher, whose influential

work, Small is Beautiful, became a centerpiece of the environmental

movements of the 1970s, further elaborates: “what is worse, and

destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has

a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all

values” (31). It is this type of depraved relation to the natural

world that initiatives such as the EU ETS exacerbate by

essentially placing nature for sale on the global market and by

emphasizing climate change mitigation tactics that are first and

foremost economically efficient. These approaches detract from

alternative ways of valuing the world and evaluating good versus

harm. Indeed, as Spash muses, “Good actions are not those which

simply make the most profit or cost the least” (189). To begin

with, an effective policy initiative designed to mitigate social

and environmental harm could place human and environmental well-

being at the forefront of its aims, with stringent and truly

binding restrictions on any types of activity, ‘economically

efficient’ or otherwise, that threaten such well-being.

An incipient social initiative that warrants brief

mentioning as it is increasingly regarded by many as a powerfully

effective tool at combating climate change, among other

environmental, social, and economic issues, is the degrowth

movement. Degrowth is often described as the equitable

downscaling of global production and consumption beyond their

presently rapacious, energy, and resource-intensive levels to

those that are more socially and environmentally sustainable

(Schneider et al, 2010), Recalling the global dip in greenhouse

gas emissions that followed the 2008 global financial crisis,

Schneider et al ruminate that, “more than the Kyoto commitment

and more than technological changes, it is economic degrowth that

achieves greenhouse gas emission reductions” (2010). Indeed, one

of the primary concerns that such scholars emphasize is the very

issue of living beyond the carrying capacity of natural systems,

hence the growing significance of the degrowth discourse and a

new shift towards localization. Schneider et al note the socially

and ecologically counterproductive nature of cap and trade

systems, as they “extend the realm of markets and monetary

valuation, a proposal that is against the premise of degrowth of

reducing commodification and pulling back the economic sphere to

resocialise human relations and values”(2010). Such emerging

socio-ecological narratives suggest new paths of development and

interaction with the natural world that place concerns over

sustainability, equity, and the value of life at the forefront.

Concluding Reflections:

At present, we are amidst the EU ETS’ third phase, which is

set to run until 2020. Planned reforms for the scheme in order to

work out some of its drawbacks include the introduction of an EU-

wide cap on emissions (reduced by 1.74% each year), and a

progressive shift towards auctioning12 of allowances in place of

free allocation (ec.europa.eu). While one can only speculate on

the nature of the changes to come as the scheme gradually

evolves, the severe limitations exhibited thus far, the majority

of which have still not been critically assessed, cast

considerable doubt over its future. The increasing acceptance of

climate change as an issue itself constitutes significant

12 However, according to Scrap ETS, a network of anti-EU-ETS civil society organizations and movements, the auctioning reform of Phase IIIwill only apply to the energy sector. What’s more, as the network’s declaration notes, “exceptions have been made for utilities in Central and Eastern Europe, including those with a high dependence on coal for electricity generation”.

progress, and the fact that governments and corporations have

begun to engage with it in new global discourses around

mitigation and adaptation is a sign of hope, but it is not

enough. Naomi Klein urges a more fundamental assessment of our

current predicament: “…ours is a global economy created by, and

fully reliant upon, the burning of fossil fuels and… a dependency

that foundational cannot be changed with a few gentle market

mechanisms. It requires heavy-duty interventions: sweeping bans

on polluting activities, deep subsidies for green alternatives,

pricey penalties for violations, reversals of privatization…”

(39), as well as dynamic, decentralized, grassroots social

movement initiatives that offer bottom-up approaches to the

climate crisis with an emphasis on people, not profits.

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