The Politics of Carbon Markets

The Politics of Carbon Markets offers an enlivening antidote to carbon market fatigue. The assembled articles avoid moribund debates between proponents and opponents of carbon trading by anchoring carbon markets in the broader concerns of environmental politics; and not a politics of governments and policy instruments, but a postfoundational lively politics, which interrogates questions of nature, culture and power. Benjamin Stephan and Richard Lane's edited volume is a must read for those seeking to understand the past, present, and future politics of carbon. Simone Pulver, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA Can carbon markets be part of the solution to global climate change, including in the global South? Can they make development more sustainable as well as reduce emissions? This edited volume takes a historical perspective on the evolution of carbon markets, mainly in the North. With close analysis of the political construction of markets, the volume offers food for thought for those who want to understand how it might evolve in developing countries in future. Harald Winkler, University of Cape Town, South Africa Carbon markets have long been understood to be exacerbating the very climate crisis they were supposed to help address. What is less understood is why they stagger on regardless. This timely volume greatly illuminates the deep politics of these so-called zombies and of the zombie scholarship that sometimes accompanies them. In so doing, it lends welcome empirical substance to the study of that more encompassing zombie phenomenon known as neoliberalism. Larry Lohmann, The Corner House, UK