Carbon taxes cater to the interests of big business, facilitating neoliberal pollution under the guise of environmental regulation. The plan increases emissions which turns the aff.

Despite embodying these characteristics, carbon pricing has emerged as a popular solution to climate change among many predominantly white organizations working on environment/climate. As the urgency of addressing the climate crisis grows and relative inaction persists, the pervasiveness of market-based “solutions” has continued to spread. In fact, in recent years,carbon pricing has begun to permeate some environmental justice spaces as well—or at the very least carbon pricing champions have begun to appropriate the language of the movement. At first glance, a price on carbon appears to make sense as it purports to incentivize shifting to renewable energy, low-or no-carbon technologies,and generally constrains the market to protect the planet. But looking beyond this surface-level analysis, the limitations and inherent flaws of carbon pricing as a tool to reduce emissions and meaningfully address the climate crisis become clear. It’s worth acknowledging that some carbon pricing models are more problematic than others. Likewise, there are some carbon pricing policies that are framed with well-meaning intentions. Ultimately, however, it is evident that carbon pricing is not the solution we need to significantly reduce carbon emissions and, in many cases, results in exacerbated impact on BIPOC as well as low-income communities and other populations vulnerable to the impacts of the extraction and refinement of fossil fuel-forms of energy, and the resulting carbon pollution from its use. Key Environmental Justice Critiques of Carbon Pricing. Carbon pricing falls short on many grounds. If we look at the lived realities of frontline communities in the US and around the world, and the track record of various carbon pricing schemes in existence, we can critique it from multiple vantage points: moral/ethical religious and spiritual human rights flaws in the economic theory which provides the rationale for the policy socio-economic outcomes environmental outcomes In this section, we deepen the environmental justice analysis by describing the four top contentions of carbon pricing advocates juxtaposed against the lived realities, as defined by frontline communities. #1: Missing the Bigger Picture Carbon pricing proponents say: Market-based solutionsare “elegant” and “efficient.” When a price is assigned to carbon emissions, polluters will be incentivized to reduce emissions and encouraged to invest in alternative forms of energy and production practices. Carbon pollution is not a technical problem that can be fixed with a market-based solution that allows fossil fuels to continue to be extracted from the earth and burned. Climate change is a symptom of—not technical problem within—the dig, dump, and burn economy. Climate change is the earth’s cry for us to profoundly rethink our relationship with each other as humans, and with the larger ecosystems of which we are a part –not simply to tweak prices for fossil fuels.As researcher Larry Lohmann asserts, “Many people of strong environmentalist convictions and democratic spirit genuinely believe that if the earth’s carbon-cycling capacity is to be respected and preserved, it is inevitable that it be treated as a commodity.” In fact, they have championed language which looks at nature through the lens of “environmental services” as a way of protecting and defending it. While we acknowledge the appeal of this viewpoint—notably its convenience and simplicity—the reality is that it doesn’t hold up. The purpose of the dominant, extractive economy is the accumulation, concentration, and enclosure of wealth and power achieved through resource extraction and labor exploitation. It is in the context of this deeply flawed economic system that the climate crisis has emerged. 60Considering how an entrenched logic of domination, exploitation of land and people, and indiscriminate economic growth has set the stage for the climate crisis as we experience it today, supposed solutions that uphold or reinforce this economic system should give us pause (if not set off alarm bells and red flags). A system where companies or governments buy and sell permits to pollute fails to challenge the economicsystem that created the climate crisis in the first place. On the contrary, it reinforces it. “Market-based mechanisms are a false solution to curb catastrophic climate change and deforestation. As an example, these mechanisms allow big polluters to continue to poison communities at sites of extraction and at points of distribution and processing by buying up pollution permits from forests around the world and simultaneously continuing dirty pollution practices in a different country.” Womens’ Earth and Climate Action Network. #2: Carbon Pricing Schemes Are Not Designed to Produce Localized Emissions Reductions. Carbon pricing proponents say: “Carbon pricing reduces emissions in the cheapest, most efficient means possible.”Reality: Carbon pricing makes pollution hot spots worse and fails to reduce localized emissions, by design. Rather than stop pollution at the source, carbon-pricing schemes often add to and reinforce the toxic and disproportionate burdens that BIPOC, low-income communities, and other frontline communities already face from polluting-facilities—such as power plants, industrial facilities, or trash incinerators. Carbon-pricing schemes are not designed to produce localized emissions reductions, as the California’s cap and trade program has demonstrated.81By spreading emissions cuts around so that the “cheapest,” “most efficient,” and “easiest” cuts are made first, carbon pricing explicitly neglects—and actually continues to erase and reinforce—the conditions of sacrifice communities. The health and well-being of these communities has been sacrificed in order to further the interests of those benefiting off of the extractive economy. By reducing the climate emergency to a crisis of carbon, carbon-pricing policies also fall short in addressing the co-pollutants that are produced from industrial facilities—notably, particulate matter, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and air toxics (roughly six hundred chemicals subject to Toxics Release Inventory reporting and beyond). Fossil fuel combustion is not only the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, but a major source of local ambient air pollution. Numerous studies indicate that such co-pollutants are connected to a variety of detrimental health impacts. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2012, approximately three million deaths were attributable to ambient air pollution.83This underscores the importance of monitoring co-pollutant emissions during the design and implementation of climate policies. “This is carbon trading—a multi-billion dollar scheme whose basic premise is that polluters can pay someone else to clean up their mess so that they don’t have to.” Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes in Carbon Trading: How it Works and Why It Fails. “We here in the town of Brookhaven are in a fight for our lives, literally. We have a power plant that was put here in an overburdened majority-minority community, and now they want to expand it to create an ash facility that will make us the garbage hub of the region. We had an initial victory. The citizen’s panel that was appointed to look at the feasibility of the ash facility has unanimously recommended that it not be built, and that was really a victoryfor the NAACP. The fight still continues because this is just the beginning. We’re in it. We’re the oldest and the boldest for a reason, because we stay the course.”Nicole Christian, Environmental Justice Chair, Brookhaven Town NAACP (Long Island, NY). Carbon offset markets are the most blatant example of relocating emissions instead of reducing them. By design, offsets merely “compensate” for emissions growth by implementing a reduction elsewhere. In many cases, however, offsets actually increaseemissions rather than displace them. Given that offsets are designed to be cheaper than emissions reductions, they are an attractive means to avoid changing practices and reducing emissions at the source. The largest companies which tend to purchase the largest portion of carbon offsets also tend to be the biggest polluters. When employed as a compliance mechanism in cap and trade, offsets remove the limit (the “cap”) on emissions supposedly imposed by the scheme. In addition to failing to result in real emissions reductions, offsets also allow companies and governments to shirk their responsibilities to clean up their practices. If a policy supposedly addresses carbon-emissions at large but fails to deliver localized emissions reductions or extend air-quality co-benefits, then it is most certainly a false solution. #3: The Origins of Carbon Pricing Advanced Programs Designed to Benefit Polluters Carbon pricing proponents say: “Everybody agrees—Republicans, Democrats, Investors, Fossil Fuel Companies—carbon pricing is the best way to address the climate crisis. 63Reality: Carbon markets were created so that governments and fossil fuel companies could “flexibly” meet emissions reductions standards without having to significantly change their own pollution practices. Carbon pricing programs are politically popular, in part, because they are perceived as the least expensive and most-industry friendly approach to reducing carbon pollution. Indeed, carbon markets originated as a means through which responsible entities (i.e. governments and corporations) could “flexibly” meet emissions reductions standards without having to make significant operating changes. This is especially true with mechanisms which offer compliance loopholes such as free allowances or carbon offsets that allow companies to continue polluting at rates that deny direct air quality benefits to those communities living in the shadow of their facilities. As a carbon pricing critique published by Food and Water Watch clearly articulates, “Companies trade pollution credits with little or no public input. This lack of transparency can concentrate emissions and exacerbate the persistent inequitable health and economic burdens in disadvantaged communities. Unlike the regulatory process, pollution trading leaves almost no room for political or legal recourse.” “Market-based approaches such as a carbon tax are accepted by the fossil fuel industry because they do not actually threaten the ongoing and continuous extraction of oil and gas.” Cynthia Mellon, Policy Coordinator at the Climate Justice Alliance “At a time when rampant free market capitalism has led to financial crisis, with skyrocketing oil and food prices, market based ‘innovative’ financial mechanisms are still being promoted to commodify nature including, carbon trading, carbon offsets, payments forenvironmental services, REDD, and biodiversity offsets. These 'solutions' are more likely to endanger biodiversity, climate and communities. Such false solutions are really for the benefit of corporations. The real agenda behind this is to increase corporate controlover land, forests, water, agriculture and biodiversity, using climate change and the biodiversity crisis as an opportunity to further these objectives. This is a new 21stcentury phase of colonialism.”Climate Justice Group Joint Statement at the Convention on Biological Diversity 86Given the historical fraternization between policymakers and powerful energy lobbyists, who have always subsidized, benefited, and favored the oil and gas industry at the expense of consumers, why would we venture to now trust the government to be fully accountable in fairly and accurately administering carbon pricing regulations? When carbon market advocates assert that pricingcarbon is “efficient” or “cost-effective,” those advocates fail to specify for whom: polluting industries.” If our objective is to achieve drastic emissions reductions or bring about a change in a larger technological system, a solution designed for polluters is not it. Food and Water Watch, November 2017 #4: Existing Carbon Markets Haven’t Produced Significant Results. Carbon pricing proponents say: Carbon pricing is an efficient and effective way to reduce emissions. Reality: Existing carbon markets have not produced significant emissions reductions at the rate we need. Carbon prices have consistently been low. Policymakers have often had more success in reducing emissions by imposing direct regulations. Beyond the deeply flawed ideological basis of carbon markets, existing carbon pricing approaches have dismal track records of producing significant emissions reductions. “These cap and trade proposals are mostly about protecting business as usual. Right now, the US subsidizes fossil fuels at more than twice the rate of renewables. What? We shouldn’t be subsidizing fossil fuels at all! These guys don’t seem to realize that the simplest way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere is to leave it safely in the ground. U.S. congressman, Rick Boucher, a well-known friend of the coal industry voted for cap and trade. He said it ‘strengthens the case for utilities to continue to use coal.’ No law that encourages coal use can stop climate change. Period. Solid caps, strong laws, citizen action, and paying off ecological debt and creating a clean energy economy, that’s how we can save our future.”Annie Leonard, Story of Stuff Project Countries where governments have imposed fees on carbon emissions haven’t shown significant decline in carbon emissions. As a matter of fact, after remaining flat for three years, global greenhouse emissions rose to an all-time high in 2017. Take British Columbia, Canada, for example, where carbon emissions have actually increased since a carbon tax was introduced in 2008. Recent data indicates that CO2emissions went up from 61.3 million tons in 2015 to 62.3 in 2016; CO2emissions have increasedin five of the last six years that data is available. In the United States, existing carbon pricing programs are encountering difficulties achieving reductions or spurring innovation. There is concern in California, for instance,that an oversupply of allowances could result in industries buying and hoarding so many that they might evade the need to actually reduce emissions in the future, when the state’s emission target stighten. In many cases, governments are unwilling to impose carbon prices that are high or broad enough to make a significant difference.In 2017, a group of economists known as the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices concluded that carbon prices would need to be between $40-$80 per metric ton by 2020, and between $50-$100 by 2030 in order to achieve the emission cuts called for in the Paris Climate Accord. (It’s worth noting that the goals set by the Paris Agreement are widely considered to be insufficient.)91A report from the United Nations called for a steeper price, estimating that governments would need to impose effective carbon prices of $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution by 2030 to keep overall global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Of the global emissions now subject to a carbon price, only one percent are priced at or above $40, while three-quarters are priced below $10. Only 0.15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are subject to a carbon price that economists deem high enough to make much of an environmental difference. It’s important to point out here, that to date, policymakers have often had more success in reducing emissions by imposing direct regulations. Examples include the case of sulfur dioxide trading mentioned previously, as well as the United States’ strict fuel-economy standards, which have reduced domestic oil consumption by billions of barrels.94,95