If you have worked in the climate change space for very long, you have likely faced this question in one form or another. Try explaining carbon offsets to your sister-in-law and you have two choices. Either you give her a superficial response in an attempt to change the subject or you dive in and try and explain offsets. If you chose the latter, you will find it near impossible to avoid the concepts of a baseline and additionality.
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It’s December, a month best characterized in many parts of the world by holiday cheer, winter revelry, and reflection of the year that’s about to draw to a close. But for those following international climate negotiations, the end of the year also marks the season for another brand of reflection: deriving meaning from the annual UNFCCC Conference of the Parties.
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“Will failure to strike a post-Kyoto deal in Durban kill the carbon market?”
With the latest big annual United Nations climate conference just a month away in Durban, South Africa, this question is seeing attention from the press the world around. The question seems innocuous enough, but as with so much in climate policy —and particularly the UN process— answers come in pieces, with caveats, and almost exclusively in acronym-thick jargon difficult for anyone who doesn’t happen to be a full-time climate policy wonk to penetrate.
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