This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein

The most embarrassing controversy for defenders of this model involves coolant factories in India and China that emit the highly potent greenhouse gas HFC-23 as a by-product. By installing relatively inexpensive equipment to destroy the gas (with a plasma torch, for example) rather than venting it into the air, these factories—most of which produce gases used for air-conditioning and refrigeration—have generated tens of millions of dollars in emission credits every year. The scheme is so lucrative, in fact, that it has triggered a series of perverse incentives: in some cases, companies can earn twice as much by destroying an unintentional by-product as they can from making their primary product, which is itself emissions intensive. In the most egregious instance of this, selling carbon credits constituted a jaw-dropping 93.4 percent of one Indian firm’s total revenues in 2012.63