Carbon Hunters

Carbon Hunters
Thursday November 26, 2009 at 8 pm on CBC-TV

Repeating: Friday November 27, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network

Carbon Hunters
Watch the promo online.

2:01 minutes



Is it possible, considering the many obstacles, to stop global warming, or at least reduce its harm? Anticipating the important United Nations Climate Change Conference starting December 7 in Copenhagen, Doc Zone presents the World Premiere of a timely and intriguing new documentary by Vancouver filmmaker/journalist Miro Cernetig, Carbon Hunters.

Carbon Hunters delves into the controversial, little-understood, yet booming industry of carbon credit trading as a potentially workable mechanism towards solving what most people now acknowledge as the greatest crisis facing the planet: global warming.

This is a crisis with no easy solutions. Voters so far seem reluctant to accept carbon taxes so, while we wait for industry and governments to sign on to binding international agreements that will fix limits on air pollution, one possible solution is good to go right now: carbon trading.

Sometimes called emissions trading, carbon offset, or cap-and-trade, carbon trading is attractive to many because it is a market-driven solution that puts a fixed price on pollution, allowing those who pollute to pay and those do not pollute to profit from their position.

Enter Vancouver entrepreneur Shawn Burns. They say every cloud has a silver lining. In Burns' case, he thinks that cloud is global warming and that there may be a way to stop it and make money along the way. The CEO of Carbon Credit Corp. is a 'carbon hunter' - a whole new breed of entrepreneur in a booming new industry: global traders who scour the planet looking for carbon credits. Burns and his partners package those credits and sell them to polluters, taking a cut from the sale.

The plan for trading carbon as a global commodity was hatched at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Today, that carbon trading market is a 'green rush' that's already worth $100 billion and climbing. But how does it actually work, and what does a carbon credit actually buy?

Filmmaker Miro Cernetig travels from BC to the Canadian prairie, and on to India, Philippines, Hollywood, Chicago, London and New York to find answers, linking seemingly disparate elements like the dung of sacred cows in India, the band Coldplay, Alberta wheat farmers, movie star Cameron Diaz, Filipino garbage scavengers, U.S. President Barack Obama, sea algae, the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, an English funeral director, the Amazon rain forest, and the Alberta Tar Sands.

Cernetig hears from supporters of this profit motive-driven solution, like influential Canadian Maurice Strong, who feels that carbon trading is "an essential element in the solution...and the most effective one that's actually working at this moment," and detractors, like Kevin Smith of the group Carbon Trade Watch and author of the book Carbon Neutral Myth - Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins, who argues that the carbon trading business is all smoke and mirrors. As for Shawn Burns, he concludes, "Rather than just exploiting resources now we can make money protecting resources. I think you can make money and save the planet at the same time. And I think you should."

And where does the average Canadian come into this? Cernetig talks to a Vancouver man who learned whether the tree he bought as a carbon credit to offset an airplane trip really made a difference. "This is the first film that takes a global look at how you buy a carbon credit and what you get - or don't get - when you do," says Cernetig. "In our travels we've discovered the difficulties and ethical quandaries behind creating a new commodity - carbon credits - to deal with climate change."

Carbon Hunters is produced by Force Four Entertainment in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporatio