The EU was serious about emissions reduction when it first set up the ETS in 2005. Carbon trading was at the core of the EU’s and USA’s strategy, seeing it as incentive to phase into clean technologies. But the profits from pollution turned out to be much greater.

In 2003 there were no Wall Street executives betting on carbon; today there are at least 130 representing big players like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan and others. The Commodity Futures Trading exchange sees a $2 trillion market building up. Others feel this is an underestimate and speak in terms of a $10 trillion market soon.

At the end of 2008, the US Government Accounting Office stated that carbon trading had failed to accomplish its objective. Last year the Deutsche Bank said carbon markets were simply not working. Even the World Bank, the biggest funder of polluting projects, agreed.

A report of the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee criticised the government for misleading accounting and advised greenhouse gas cuts be increased by almost 50%. The UK had earlier bought 31.4 million carbon credits through Europe’s ETS in 2006, and 25.7 million in 2007. “Simply purchasing ETS credits did not necessarily mean that the UK was funding real and equivalent emissions reductions elsewhere,” said the Audit Committee.

Yet, soon after the Copenhagen summit ended, lobbies of the EU’s top-polluters were back in action. The European Chemical Industry Council – which represents 29,000 companies – warned that ‘unilateral measures’ would put European companies at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, some even threatening to move their factories abroad where there were less stringent regulations.

Apart from replacing fossil-fuel dependent industries with low-carbon ones, there is a major solution to global warming that has always existed – by simply giving up superfluous but damaging chemical fertilisers and pesticides and unsustainable farm practices, and reverting to traditional farming systems.

Soil contains a lot of carbon – over twice as much as land vegetation. Most of that carbon naturally trapped in the soil, is being removed and released into the air in even more noxious forms following manufacturing processes. When dead plants, animals and organic waste decompose, carbon is released into the atmosphere, but it is balanced by fresh vegetative growth and new life. But with industrial-agricultural methods, carbon is lost at a much faster rate than can be reabsorbed by nature.

Monocultural forests, sugarcane, soybeans and oil palm plantations alone cover some 800 million acres or over 20% of the world’s total cultivated land controlled by corporate interests that abandon plantations worked to death by chemicals, before moving onto newly-levelled forests.

Nature processes boast an in-built democracy that requires sharing by humans who use it. True organic farming, being labour-intensive and based on local conditions, is only possible on a small scale. By localising food production worldwide, not only would about a billion small farmers operating on two to five acres quickly become food-secure and self-reliant, the reduction from global transport, refrigeration, oil-dependent food packaging alone could do away with 10-12% of current global emissions. In Pakistan, where feudalism rules the roost, drastic land reform would also be required.

Just by abandoning industrial agriculture – which is essentially farming without farmers – and returning organic matter to the soil through sustainable organic means would sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gases by 20-35%. By halting deforestation, land-clearing, industrial monoculture and agro-fuel production, another 15-18% greenhouse gases would be avoided.

Organic agriculture alone is the most efficient, cheapest and socially-beneficial method for reducing greenhouse gases, also for capturing excess emission from non-agricultural sources. Most importantly, it requires no crippling loans and foreign aid, just honest political will.

The US could cut out 64 gallons of fossil fuel per hectare if it grew corn organically. If it converted all its 65 million hectares of farmland to organic, the US alone could remove 260 million tonnes of CO2 a year. On a global level, organic soils could sequester 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon.

Investors, speculators, development banks and agro-based multinational corporations do not want the organic solution as it would pull the rug from under their feet by leaving nothing for them to invest in. A trillion-dollar carbon market is hard to give up. But like industrial agriculture, it was an artificial and superfluous invention.

But while the West wastes time plotting to continue with carbon profits, they are in danger of being bypassed by China.

China hasn’t been sitting pretty as an outsourced global factory simply producing the cheapest versions of consumer goods at unbeatable prices for the world market. It is fully aware of the implications of global warming and climate change and has been investing heavily in low-carbon ‘clean technologies.’ For example, China already boasts 1,000 solar water heater manufacturers that have created 600,000 jobs. This year, it will exceed 5,000 MW of solar cells, a third of the world’s total; in five years time this will double. China extended protection to the domestic wind industry and lifted restrictions to imports only last year after the locals fully dominated the industry. If the Pakistan government is smart enough, it should take advantage of our good relations with China to obtain their technologies and know-how at affordable prices without being taken for a ride by IFI-tied loans.

But on some money-making scores, there’s not much difference in the thinking of feudals or the military government that sanctioned corporate farming. The proposed massive monoculture is exactly the kind that has exacerbated carbon emissions while destroying hundreds of millions of fertile acres in America and elsewhere. After a brief silence following public uproar over the secret leasing of half a million or more acres to foreign investors, the Pakistan government has now announced that the deals made – previously denied – now stand. Whether it is out of scientific ignorance or the usual indifference to the national interest, unless citizens block it, this step will kill our agricultural goose sooner than later.

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