lunacy

The principal mechanism for cutting carbon dioxide emissions is carbon trading, which essentially entails enclosure of the last remaining commons – the carbon absorption capacity of the atmosphere – by allocating property rights to those who are already destroying it. This is none other than a neoliberal extension of commodification of the atmosphere...

... for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer, implying patterns of consumption which, in a world facing climate change, cannot be sustained. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth - made up of all those energy-hungry giant flat screen TVs and sports utility vehicles - to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people in absolute poverty, compared with just $45 dollars in the 1980s.

During the 1980s - what was called the lost decade of development - from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. A decade later that had shrunk to just $0.60c, and the actual mean income of those living under $1 per day in Africa also fell.