The Carbon Market: The Conference of the Parties for Combating Climate Change, Solutions and Implementation

The Kyoto Protocol capped the emissions of the main emitters, the industrialized countries, one by one. It also created an innovative financial mechanism, the Carbon Market and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows developing nations to receive carbon credits when they reduce their emissions below their baselines. The carbon market, an economic system that created a price for carbon for the first time, is now used in four continents, is promoted by the World Bank, and is recommended even by leading oil and gas companies. However, one critical problem for the future of the Kyoto Protocol is the continuing impasse between the rich and the poor nations.

Who should reduce emissions — the rich or the poor countries?

Graciela Chichilnisky worked extensively on the Kyoto Protocol, creating and designing the carbon market that became international law in 2005. In 2017, she was selected by the Carnegie Foundation for their prestigious Great Immigrant, Great American award showcased in the New York Times, and in 2018 she was awarded the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement featured in the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post calls her an “A-List Star” and Time Magazine calls her a “Hero of the Environment.” U.S. Congressman Jay Inslee wrote that her work is “revolutionary for the international community.” A world-renowned economist, she is the creator of the formal theory of Sustainable Development and acted as Lead U.S. Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the Nobel Prize in 2007. Her pioneering work uses innovative market mechanisms to create Green Capitalism. Dr. Chichilnisky acts as a special adviser to several U.N. organizations and heads of state. Dr. Chichilnisky is CEO and Co-Founder of Global Thermostat (www.globalthermostat.com), a company that has created a “Carbon Negative Technology”™ that captures CO2 from air and transforms it into profitable assets, including biofuels, food, beverages, and enhanced oil recovery. Earlier, she founded and led two successful companies: FITEL, a financial telecommunications company that was sold in Japan; and Cross Border Exchange, a global technology communications company sold to J. P. Morgan. Additionally, Dr. Chichilnisky is a Professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics and a University Senator at Columbia University, and Director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management (www.columbiariskmanagement.net), where she developed a landmark methodology, with support from the U.S. Air Force, for a new foundation of probability and statistics in an approach to catastrophic risks that allows more realistic treatment of rare but important events. She is the author of 15 books and some 320 scientific articles in preeminent academic journals. Her two most recent books are The Economics of the Global Environment: Catastrophic Risks in Theory and Policy, and Manifolds of Preferences and Equilibrium. Dr Chichilnisky holds two PhD degrees, in Mathematics and Economics from MIT and UC Berkeley. She is a frequent political and economic commentator on CNN, ABC, BBC TV News, and Bloomberg News, as well as a frequent keynote speaker at leading international conferences and universities. She taught previously at Harvard, Essex and Stanford Universities, appeared in Time Magazine on “Heroes of the Environment,” and was elected one of the Ten Most Influential Latinos in the U.S. Dr. Chichilnisky is currently a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. Fast Company selected her company, Global Thermostat, as a “World’s Top Ten Most Innovative Company” in Energy. Dr. Chichilnisky was selected as the 2015 “CEO of the Year” by IAIR, a title awarded at the Yale University Club in New York City. In 2019, MIT Technology Review chose the carbon removal technology that she co-authors as “Top Ten Breakthrough Technologies” in the world, an award curated by Bill Gates.

Peter Bal is a businessman and ecological restoration practitioner. Born in the U.S. in 1960 and educated across Europe and Asia, Bal uses his multilingual and creative mind to bridge cultural differences in international transactions. His experience includes selling the Empire State Building, producing alcohol from grapes and restoring a devastated forest in France. Bal sees CO2 as an asset to be mined. He is dedicated to natural plant absorption, as well as to industrial solutions for retrieving CO2 from the atmosphere.