IT may come as a surprise to some readers that, although signed in 2016, the Paris accord on climate change still has one important feature yet to be agreed, writes SLDC Leader Cllr Giles Archibald.

One of the aspects of the global campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that companies and countries can actually buy themselves out of trouble. It is called carbon trading. At the moment, a company that is not meeting its objectives for carbon reductions can buy carbon credits from another company or project that is polluting less than its maximum, or in some other way contributing to greenhouse gas reduction.

This approach has several unintended adverse consequences. Environmental projects that might have happened anyway are sold to allow polluters to continue to pollute. The cost of one ton of CO2 on the carbon trading market is much less than the value of the environmental damage done by the ton of CO2, and the frictional costs of some projects turn out to be huge. Effectively it is a system that provides a licence to pollute, with a disputed net benefit.

The Paris accord wants to allow this to continue. Countries will set their own targets. If they are doing better than their targets, they can sell off the difference to countries who are not doing so well. The obvious weakness of this system is that as countries set their own targets there is not much incentive to set stretch goals. Tough targets reduce your chance of selling future carbon credits.

Negotiators are currently mired in discussions about double counting. Apparently, some countries want to both count good performance against its overall targets, and sell the difference.

Other countries want to be able to sell the many credits still remaining from the prior system.

It looks like a bit of a mess and it may be best to reconsider the whole concept. Sadly a few carbon traders would lose their jobs. But the scheme looks flawed and probably should never have started.