A look at carbon-right disputes

Climate change is an issue that concerns the common interest of the international community, regardless of a country's development status. However, it's regrettably ironic that the West still approached climate change at the Copenhagen summit with the power politics of a Cold War mindset.

With the absoluteness of "global warming" being replaced by the conceptual ambiguity of "climate change", it has turned out that the forces pushing the world toward a climate problem are not generated from the catastrophic scenario of "global warming" drawn by scientists, but from the wrestling over a carbon-credit standard system and carbon rights that lie behind it.

The Copenhagen talks appeared to focus on promises of emission reduction by developed and developing countries. But it was actually about the distribution of development rights, leadership and emission reduction resources in the international community. Energy efficiency, the right to reduce carbon emissions, has become an asset for countries to fight for during the last 10 years. The Kyoto Protocol, together with the post-Kyoto system, can be regarded as an international agreement endowing carbon dioxide emission rights with a completely new currency issuing system. The basic framework of a "carbon-credit standard system" that boasts the comprehensive advantages of commodity and currency standards has been established. The carbon standard has gradually evolved into a kind of sovereignty productivity, operating global wealth and redefining international division of labor.