Isramart : Hunting the carbon hunters: TV documentary tracks global trade in carbon credits.

Isramart news:
Capitalism has shown a remarkable resilience over the years. It even manages to take advantage of trends that would seem to be diametrically opposed to it.

Case in point: climate change.

Politicians continue to debate about how and when to implement the environmental standards set forth in the Kyoto accord. But already some enviro- capitalists have set up something called the Chicago Climate Exchange, “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases.”

Essentially, it allows carbon producers to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions by “buying” carbon credits off other companies or countries that reduce carbon. And it is potentially very, very big business.

“Some people say it will be in the billions of dollars,” said Vancouver Sun columnist Miro Cernetig, who wrote and directed Carbon Hunters, a new documentary on the phenomenon.

“It’ll be in the trillions, eventually, if this takes further hold. It’ll basically be the counter-balance of fossil-fuel consumption.”

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is a big proponent of carbon credits. Cernetig wrote several stories on the issue, and decided it might make a good documentary. So he did, with Vancouver’s Force Four Entertainment, the CBC and BBC International. It screens Thursday at 8 p.m. as part of CBC’s Doc Zone series.

Cernetig and his crew of three travelled the globe tracking down carbon hunters.

“We go everywhere, from villages in India who are making carbon credits, to traders who are selling them on Wall street,” he said. “It’s the complete food chain of what’s going on with the carbon world.”

One of the sites he visits is a dump in Manila.

“Let’s say you’re a European utility and you’re burning coal, and you’re going over targets that they set in Kyoto or European countries,” he said. “If you go to a dump in Manila, and you find somebody who’s sequestering methane, which is another greenhouse gas, by doing that, you basically get a carbon credit. We found an Italian utility company that was doing that.

“That dump in Manila, though, also has thousands of scavengers who are working for a dollar a day.”

The goal of the film is to show “average people” just what it means when you buy a carbon credit.

“(This) is probably not going away, as long as our leaders and people believe that climate change is happening,” said Cernetig.

Carbon Hunters is Cernetig’s fifth documentary. His previous subjects ranged from Cirque du Soleil’s trip to Mongolia (Juggling Dreams), to the Inuit selling the right to hunt polar bears to Americans (Polar Bear Safari), to treasure hunters off the coast of Cuba (Castro’s Gold), to China’s sexual revolution.

He said the documentaries typically take 12 to 18 months to produce, and cost about $500,000 to $600,000 to make. He does them on his vacation time from the Vancouver Sun.