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Dickinson to Durban » Carbon Markets

The Corporations Speak

By: Anna McGinn ’14 Reading industries’ and corporations’ take on climate change policy is an interesting perspective to dissect especially after reading IPCC and scientific documents. Their focus is not to describe the science of climate change or to create international agreements on GHG emissions. Rather their report, “Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options: A report summarizing work at RFF as part of the inter-industry U.S. Climate Policy Forum,” explains how corporations would like the United States to approach climate change regulations. From page one, they focus on regulating GHG emissions through various market approaches. In the realm of corporations, everything has a dollar value. Further, they are careful to use non-committal language and are vague in their explanations of solutions. Despite some drawbacks, it seems impressive that these 23 corporations came … Read entire article »

Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change

From Friend to Foe

By: Christine Burns ’14 On September 15th the Mosaic students and a first-year seminar participated in a climate change negotiations simulation.  Each student was given a country to represent and we were placed into three categories: developing (EU, US), rapidly developing (China, India), and other developing (Sub-Sahara Africa, Bangladesh) countries.  We then attempted to negotiate a climate change agreement between the three groups. I now have an understanding for how difficult climate negotiations truly are. I always get annoyed when global negotiations do not produce results, but after heatedly arguing with my friends and peers for three hours, I have a much better appreciation for how complex international negotiations are.  Countries come from very different backgrounds making it difficult for them to see eye-to-eye and therefore come to a consensus that incorporates … Read entire article »

Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action