Nov. 25, 2009 - Issue #736: Poster Boys

Carbon Hunters: Penny for your pollution

Carbon Hunters examines the new business of carbon credits

As a columnist at the Vancover Sun, Miro Cernetig's been following British Columbia's climate change policy for a while now; as a filmmaker, however, he's latched on to a particular global take on the issue: carbon trading, a market-driven method of reducing pollution that has, seemingly out of nowhere, become a multi-billion dollar industry.
"I realized this was [happening in] a lot more [places] than British Columbia, " he says. "It was kind of a global trade, and in fact it's been going on under our noses for quite some time. It's not really a new thing, it's just becoming known, I think."
Cernetig's now crafted Carbon Hunters, a documentary (his fourth) on the subject that examines the rapidly emerging carbon trade take on climate change, and the titular entrepreneurs who facilitate the industry by acting as middlemen between those earning carbon credits and those who wish to purchase them.

To unpack that a bit, carbon trading involves the purchase and sale of carbon credits, a token rewarded to people or corporations who cut back on their carbon emissions. The credits can then be sold to heavier polluters, which lessens the heavy tax they have to pay for excessive polluting. The carbon hunters round-up credits and find big-business buyers. Individual deals can be worth millions, or more—hugely profitable, especially for an initiative that is, although market driven, green at heart.
"Governments set targets of emission targets of what you're allowed," Cernetig says. "So the theory behind carbon trading is you basically keep making it more expensive to emit carbon, so eventually, what should happen is it becomes so expensive that people will find alternatives, or they'll find technologies to reduce their own carbon footprint, because the value of a carbon credit will go up,"
The documentary explores both large and small groups involved in carbon credits, as local as our province—"energy companies had actually been buying some of the credits in Alberta," Cernetig notes—as well as those who support and oppose the idea. But regardless of the mixed stances people have on the attempts to make big money while going green, Cernetig points out that the carbon trade industry's becoming increasingly important, and quickly.
"I think people have to realize it doesn't matter where you stand on the climate change issue. When it comes to carbon trading, it's here, and it isn't going to go away until the day we decide that climate change isn't an issue—and that would be through our leaders and our scientists. [They] are gonna have to decide that," he says "So this is part of the 21st century. Some people say it'll be the biggest commodity ever, bigger than oil." V

Thu, Nov 26 (8 pm)
Fri, Nov 27 (10 pm)
Carbon Hunters
Written & Directed by Miro Cernetig
CBC Television

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