Using Conflict Resolution to Help Stop Global Warming

Karuna Center for Peacebuilding   
October 25th, 2011

Credit: NASA/WikiMedia

By Olivia Dreier

Karuna Center Associate Eileen Babbitt and I recently co-facilitated the “Green Summit on Carbon Pricing,” a meeting of some 50 environmental leaders and advocates in the U.S. We were asked to apply our experience in conflict resolution to a new area: climate change solutions.

The absence of any means of pricing and/or limiting and taxing carbon emissions means that there is no economic incentive in the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions, the major cause of global warming, which is arguably the greatest threat we face as a global community. There is an ongoing division among environmental advocates over which form of carbon-emissions pricing should be adopted by U.S. legislation and policy. Wide public support will be required to get Congress to act, and little will happen if leading environmentalists are not all pulling in the same direction. Karuna Center was brought in tobegin a process of consensus building among environmental leaders so that they can move forward with greater clarity, unity, and impact.

Olivia leads a discussion at the Green Summit for Carbon Pricing

How can a market-based solution reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere? Three major ideas are on the table: cap-and-trade, cap-and-dividend, and a carbon tax. A “cap-and-trade” system would set a cap on carbon emissions, and then allow corporations to buy the right to pollute beyond that cap from other companies that have greener operations. A “cap-and-dividend” system would cap carbon at the source: corporations that sell oil, coal, and natural gas would buy permits to use carbon, and the revenue from these permits would be placed in a not-for-profit trust that would pay all U.S. citizens a dividend that would help offset rising fossil fuel prices. A “carbon tax” would tax the carbon content of combustible fossil fuels in order to reduce emissions, and return the revenues to the U.S. public through dividends or by reducing other taxes.

A central issue that emerged at the Summit was the need to include the communities most affected by carbon emissions in the process of advocating a solution. A number of environmental justice advocates representing communities where the major carbon-emitting factories are located (that tend to be poor and inhabited by people of color) raised concerns over mechanisms that would do little to reduce actual emissions. They also wish to be fully included in the development of new policy proposals.

The threat of global warming is real, and its affects are bound to contribute to the kinds of conflicts Karuna Center works to mitigate around the word. The Summit set in motion a very important process of dialogue among key leaders in the environmental movement, who are well versed in the techniques of advocacy but less familiar with consensus building. Karuna Center was honored to help, and we expect to facilitate follow up meetings to support policy development that represents the interests of a broad spectrum of stakeholders and to encourage efforts to build popular and political will for the passing of effective legislation. Among world nations, the U.S. emits the second-highest amount of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; it is essential that we start taking a leadership role in addressing the problem.

[Source: Karuna Center for Peacebuilding]

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