Hvis lande som Indien, Kina og Brasilien gerne vil indføre teknologi, der begrænser deres CO2-udslip, skal de ikke regne med, at det er noget, de sådan bare får lov til. Stærke kræfter i det amerikanske erhvervsliv og det amerikanske handelskammer er klar til at vride den sidste blodsdråbe ud af de patenter, amerikanske virksomheder kunne tænkes at have på den slags teknologi.
For hvorfor skulle nogen egentlig ønske sig, at lande som Indien og Kina forurener mindre, hvis det betyder, at amerikanske firmaer risikerer at gå glip af en dollar eller to i patentafgift?
Mark Weisbrot skriver i The Guardian:
According to Inside US Trade, the US chamber of commerce is gearing up for a fight to limit the access of developing countries to environmentally sound technologies (ESTs). They fear that international climate change negotiations, taking place under the auspices of the United Nations, will erode the position of corporations holding patents on existing and future technologies.
Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China have indicated that if – as expected in the next few years – they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so.
Big business is worried about this, because they prefer that patent rights have absolute supremacy. They want to make sure that climate change talks don’t erode the power that they have gained through the World Trade Organisation.
The WTO is widely misunderstood and misrepresented as an organisation designed to promote free trade. In fact, some of its most economically important rules promote the opposite: the costliest forms of protectionism in the world.
The WTO’s rules on intellectual property (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, or Trips) are the most glaring example. These are designed to extend and enforce US-style patent and copyright law throughout the world.
Det er den samme slags økonomiske interesser, som lader millioner af verdens fattige dø af AIDS hellere end at give lande i Afrika og Asien adgang til billige kopier af deres patenterede præparater, en praksis Brasilien slap uden om ved simpelt hen at proklamere, at man ville blæse på medicinalindustriens patenter. Det lader til, at det er noget lignende, der skal til her.