Carbon Voting Gets Dirty

4:38 am Jul 3, 2013 Carbon Voting Gets Dirty These signs were hanging from parliament members’ door handles in Strasbourg. They were put there by the International Paper Co., which said it agreed with the climate-change fighting scheme, but not the proposed fix intended to raise carbon emission prices.      Courtesy of International Paper Co. European Parliament was gearing up to vote Wednesday on whether to rejuvenate, or let lie fallow, its flagship climate-change fighting policy, the Emissions Trading System. Shortly beforehand, the outcome remained too close to call with any definitive certainty. Again. The legislation is a compromise on what parliament very narrowly shot down in April. For those members of parliament having difficulties making the decision this time around, there was no shortage of opinions being pushed. MEPs, by all accounts all 766 of them, showed up to the office Monday with a hotel-style sign hanging from their office door handles by International Paper Co. IP -0.16% “Do as you are told!” said the tear-drop sign featuring a full mug shot of Connie Hedegaard, European commissioner for climate action. “The Climate Action Commissioner refused to accept your democratic decision and is now telling you to compromise your principles,” it said. “The choice is clear. Vote NO again to preserve your political credibility.” The effort was condemned by Matthias Groote, MEP in the Social Democratic party who heads the parliament’s environment committee. “I’m okay with lobbying,” Mr. Groote said. “Everybody has a right to share their opinions. It’s part of the democratic process.” “But this is not fair. We work very hard. To simplify it like this is a lie,” Mr. Groote said. An International Paper spokesman said the company supports the ETS scheme, just not the proposed fix. The proposal, known as backloading, is intended to lift the cost of emitting carbon-dioxide, which collapsed alongside the drop in demand for electricity during the economic downturn. The lack of industrial activity resulted in too many carbon permits in the market. The new rules would temporarily reduce this oversupply. The higher prices anticipated from this could help reintroduce incentives for cutting the use of fossil fuels and developing renewable technologies. But the fix is technical and not easy to understand. Analysts have said it probably won’t raise carbon prices enough to have an impact. Yet without this attempt at reform, the EU’s carbon market will almost certainly fall into obscurity, while California, Australia, and even China race ahead with their own carbon markets. So just how close will this vote be? About as close as the last one. In April parliament voted 334 to 315, with 63 abstentions. This was so close for a parliamentary vote that the a whole host of variables could have shifted it, including nothing to due with climate or industry at all, said Jerzy Buzek, EPP member and former prime minister of Poland, who is against backloading. The vote in April “was just one day before the funeral of Margaret Thatcher,” Mr. Buzek said, adding that if it had been “on the day of the funeral, backloading would have been approved. All the conservatives would have gone to London, and the result would have been quite opposite.” With no major state funerals scheduled for Wednesday, expect this to go to the wire. Taylor Scott International