I want to pick up on the statement in the blog that says: “Essentially, an ETS uses financial markets to determine how to deal with the problem of pollution.” And I want to ask: Do we think that profits for ‘carbon brokers’ and speculators should be put ahead of social and environmental justice?

I ask this because, when we think globally, we see the ETS in a different light.

So-called ‘offset schemes’ operating under the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism are generating considerable social and environmental injustice in the countries of the global South. Offset credits will be traded in New Zealand because there will be insufficient ‘free’ credits available here to meet our Kyoto commitments.

Through these offset schemes, the poor of the world are seeing their lands expropriated so that the wealthy of the world can maintain their high consumption lifestyles. For example:

* Huge eucalyptus plantations in Brasil’s Cerrado are drying up springs and streams, because eucalyptus is such a thirsty tree.

* In Maharashtra, India, a gigantic wind farm has been built on traditional grazing grounds and provides no energy to the local people themselves. Those who resisted met with repression.

* 146 hydro schemes are proposed or underway in the mountain valleys of Uttaranchal, India. Just one of these projects, on the Bhilangana River, directly affects the lives and livelihood of seven villages with a population of approximately 5,000 people.

* In the Mt Elgon National Park in eastern Uganda, local people living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, have been barred from their land and have seen their livestock confiscated by armed park rangers guarding the ‘carbon trees’ inside the National Park.

There is a lot more in a similar vein on the Carbon Trade Watch website. In particular, I encourage everyone to watch the short documentary The Carbon Connection, because this is a part of the reality of the ETS, and we must think about the global dimension of the proposed scheme.

So - can we accept the injustice outlined above so that we can feel good about New Zealand having an ETS - any ETS, even a “lame duck” version - in place?

And can we accept a new round of colonial land-grabbing, whereby “the trafficking in emission credits serves only to place the cloak of ecological respectability over local and global unequal power relations” (Heidi Bachram)?

I sincerely hope not. Let’s ditch the ETS and develop an approach to emissions reduction that works rapidly and fairly.