11-04-09 by dugan
Carbon trading. Oh, yawn. Too weird and complicated. MEGO. Leave me alone. But wait a minute: A new website, Carbon Watch, could change your mind about keeping up with cap and trade. It’s a joint project of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting and PBS’s "Frontline," and puts the central battle on global warming in terms that engage all of us.
A crucial part of global warming legislation creeping through Congress is a plan to set up caps on the amount of carbon industries can emit, and create associated "carbon credits" that polluters are given or can buy and green projects can sell, sort of like stocks, on a private market. So far, the issue has been mostly the province of the financial press and environmental groups.
Carbon Watch is still new, and so far it’s heavy on digestible, engaging 2-minute chunks of video rather than original text. (I’ve also called their office to say that some of the links are screwy–they should be fixed by the time you read this. 11/6 update: links are fixed!) But the stories Carbon Watch is posting don’t oversimplify or talk down. They’re just well-explained, and focus on issues that matter outside the financial markets. For instance, a project by GM and Chevron to buy forests in Brazil to offset the global warming effect of their carbon emissions. Credible solution, or another problem?