Economics


Stern ReviewTripple Bottom Line Carbon Trading Local Carbon Credit Trading Initiative

My main contribution here is to give a very brief overview of topics of interest in this debate.

Firstly I will point you in the direction of the Stern Review, which I assume most visitors here will have heard about if not read much yet. My first link is to the Executive Summary of that link.

Another link given in the links panel, is to the Wikipedia entry on The Tripple Bottom Line, which I will get to later, quotes the following:
"Thus by unencumbered attention to business alone,Adam Smith's, Invisible Hand, wiill ensure that business contributes most effectively to the improvement of all areas of society, social and environmental as well as economic."
Yet the opening page of the Stern summary, states:
" it is the greatest and widest-ranging market market failure ever."
Poor old Adam Smith gets the blame for a lot these days, but I think it is more his latter day so called adherents misquoting or not properly reading his work who are to blame. Smith while agreening that self interest was a primary motive, also afirmed the social contact too.

Hits on Google for Tripple Bottom Line Accounting have grown enormously in recent years. The concept grows from the idea that the cost of anything is more than its straight financial one. The other two components which need accounting for are the social one and the environmental one.
A couple of examples showing this could be a new development proposal put to council might include provisions for an aged care facility and low income earners dwellings. This could be valued in term of the social benefit accrued. World wide research shows that the community benefits in the long run by heterogenous development rather than allowing enclaves of privilege and lack thereof to develop.
At the environmental level, an organisation might pay more for a photocopier which allows trouble free double sided copying, but which costs more. The saving on paper is an environmental benefit which should be shown on the balance sheet.
There are a couple of links on the side panel for you to follow on this, including one on a critique of TBL, which claims its underbelly lies in the fact that unscrupulous organisations can use it as a way of appearing green and clean but hiding a multitude of sins.

The point emphasised in the Stern review and before that in the Kyoto Protocol is that there must be a price put on carbon emissions. The market theory as I understand it and emission of carbon should be a cost at source and not a public responsibility to clean up. The emitter paying a market price of that emission to an approved source which will carry out on the emitter's behalf some sort of carbon sequestration or invest in green energy or some such economic activity which in the longer term will lower the total greenhouse gas burden.
Australia, the world's biggest GHG emitter per capita, refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and up until the Stern Review, refused to acknowledge the concept of putting a tax on carbon. Now both Mr. Howard and Mr. Costello along with Rupert Murdoch have agreed that it will be necessary. This is a huge shift in the political landscape in Australia and opens up many opportunities.
Again the links side panel can guide the visitor to many interesting sources on the concept and practice of carbon trading.
Alas, so far, there have been many abuses and the poorest nations with many opportunities for protecting their forests and enabling atmospheric sequestration have largely been cut out of the loop and instead, large corporations have jumped on the bandwagon planting massive monoculture forrests, which instead of contributing to a solution, contribute to the problem. See the New Internationalist link in the sidebar for more on this.

Once again I welcome your thoughts and contribution on this topic as on all topics in this web site. Help to make it useful, informative and encouraging.