The Paris Accord Net Zero Goal Is A Scam. The Biggest Polluters Are Allowed to Buy A License to Pollute. (Oil#2)
The Paris Accord net zero goal is a scam. The 'price on carbon' system of trading 'right to pollute' tax credits is a 'license to pollute' system. It has led to massive increases in fossil fuel extraction and use worldwide.
The left should expose this fraud, and propose a different system. Each polluter should pay in proportion to the damage that they cause. The only feasible solution is a Winding Down To Zero Together one, achieved through a global treaty.
This is the second of two articles based in part on the an August 7 2026 article in the Toronto Globe and Mail by business reporter Tim Kiladze. The first article argued that the example of the Norway Northern Lights carbon capture project provides conclusive evidence that the carbon capture Pathways Alliance project -- that is part of the Mark Carney and Alberta deal to greenlight a new oil pipeline from the tar sands to the BC coast -- is guaranteed to fail.
The Net Zero System is Deliberately Designed To Be the Alternative to a 'Pay Taxes Based on How Much You Pollute' System. It Lets the Biggest Polluters Pay for a License to Pollute.
The goal of Net Zero mandated by the Paris Accords is a transparently dishonest coverup for an actual goal of Increasing Fossil Fuel extraction and use as a fuel by industry and consumer products. Net Zero is the short form slogan for a 'tax on carbon' (or carbon pricing) system in which governments set targets for an acceptable level of carbon pollution for each company, and then allows those companies to buy and sell credits to pollute in excess of those targets.
This allows the companies with the greatest amount of capital, who are usually the biggest polluters, to pay for a License to Pollute. As Tim Kiladze shows for the case of Alberta, governments will manipulate the target levels for emissions for each polluter and will enable the biggest polluters to have room to pay for tax credits that allow it to pollute.
We must expose Net Zero and carbon credit trading system as the crude scam that it is. The Paris Accord approach has resulted in a massive increase in the absolute level of oil extraction and use and carbon pollution. We must go back to simple goals and slogans that will work -- Let the Polluter Pay.
The only possible goal is (near) Zero. But it will take a long time to get there. It can only be done in a planned and managed way by a central authority, established by a global treaty, that makes constant fine adjustments based on input and feedback from all players. The adjustments and tradeoffs and micromanaging will also have to be grounded in ongoing research and investigation by experts of all kinds. We need a system for Winding Down to Zero, Together.
Fossil Fuel Producers Will Not Reduce Their Production Because They Cannot (and Should Not) Trust Their Competitors To Do the Same.
Why does almost every country that extracts fossil fuels continue to increase its total production? The main cause is not technological. It is political. It is about relative power. It is the fact that being a Big Oil producer gives your country (and your company) economic and political and military power relative to others. No one is going to give up their relative advantage as long as they quite correctly believe that at least some of their competition for regional or global power will do no such thing.
A Winding Down to Zero, Together system is a pact that strictly enforces the requirement that all players, including and indeed especially the biggest players, must wind down their production in strict coordination imposed by a central authority. Realistically, the goal will be to minimally change the relative power of the competing states and companies, to freeze the ratios in place. Ask Ukraine what it thinks today about giving up its nuclear weapons at the advice of Russia and the EU and the United States. The peoples and economies that are relatively weaker should not be unilaterally disarming their oil production and use either.
Weaning the world off fossil fuels will be extremely difficult to achieve, for many reasons. The main one is the threat to vested interests of making the change. Above all it is the difficulty in decarbonizing in ways that do not do too much to threaten the status quo ante of the relative power of the states and companies (capitals) with the vested interests vis a vis one another.
Most Industries That Make Goods and Services Essential to Daily Life Depend on Carbon.
The second set of obstacles are technological. Basically it will take a lot of time to invent substitutes. And we will never reach absolute zero (nor do we need to) because there will be a subset of production and distribution processes for which we will not find non-carbon substitutes.
What are the vested interests that we need to assure will not lose out their relative position in a post-Carbon economy? On the one hand, almost all of the goods and services that make up all the economies of the world require fossil fuels as inputs somewhere in the production chain, and usually in the operation of the product itself. I dare you to come up with a list of products that are central to human survival and daily life that do not. In a convoluted sense, we are all Petro States.
It Will Take While to Find Substitutes, But It Is Doable.
It will take a very long time to invent new products that do not use fossil fuels as inputs or in their operation. For that reason alone, there will need to be a quite long Winding Down process where fossil fuel extraction continues, but the total amount extracted goes down steadily in a planned and controlled way.
On the other hand, it is not conceivable that any of the countries or companies that owe their economic wealth relative to others and their relative political and military power to Oil will ever voluntarily cut back themselves. This will only happen if there is a global treaty, with a powerful set of inspection and enforcement mechanisms, in which the whole world simultaneously Winds Down to Zero, Together.
The Pollution Tax Credit Trading System in Alberta Is A Typical Net Zero Scam.
What does Tim Kiladze's research tell us about the scam of setting the goal of Net Zero, and thereby mandating a pollution credits trading system as the way to achieve the goal? He tells us a little more about the TIER system that the Mark Carney and Alberta deal updates and extends.
"[In Canada] Provinces are allowed to develop their own systems, and in Alberta, where Pathways is based, it's called TIER, or the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction system. Every large emitter is given an emissions intensity target for its operations, and if the company meets the target in a given year, it is handed credits to either sell to other companies or keep as offsets for future years.
If polluters don’t meet the emissions target, they have to either buy credits for each additional tonne of carbon they emit, at a pre-set carbon price, or they can buy credits from other companies.
For the first few years, the system worked decently. But lately, there’s been a huge oversupply of credits. [A Net Zero pollution credit trading system results in plenty of available credits for the biggest polluters to buy.] That means the effective carbon price that Alberta-based companies pay is often much lower than the regulated price. Ottawa acknowledged this in May. “Canada’s carbon credit markets are not working,” the government said in a statement.
To fix it, Canada and Alberta have agreed to set a new effective carbon price, and Alberta will enforce a minimum floor price for its TIER credits starting in 2030.
It sounds good in theory, but the new carbon price is lower than what some environmental groups stressed was necessary. Earlier this year, the Canadian Climate Institute begged the government to impose an effective price of $130 per tonne by 2030. The new rules do mandate this price, but not until 2040".