Carbon markets were sold as a grand bargain: let finance price pollution, and efficiency will follow. In practice, trading schemes mostly look like new profit pools with questionable climate impact. Any development remains constrained. The deeper driver of environmental and social risk is actually corporate concentration and greed, and that keeps widening inequality across the globe.

The developed world’s $100 billion climate-finance pledge, promised annually from 2020, was missed for years and only finally reached in 2022 at about $116 billion (OECD report). As for inequality in India, the top 1% own over 40% of total national wealth, while the bottom 50% share a sliver. That imbalance is a powder keg for social unrest and a brake on the much-touted inclusive growth.

If climate finance shows up late and inequality gallops ahead, carbon-credit trading won’t deliver legitimacy. What will? Governance that limits monopoly power, spreads ownership, and makes growth more competitive by design.

Here’s how what “greed control” looks like in practice, and it offers possible ideas for the Government of India to act decisively and to walk the talk of the prime minister

1. Break up or box in oligarchs when markets tip

• United States – AT&T (1984): The antitrust breakup of the Bell System created the “Baby Bells,” opening the door to competition that lowered long-distance prices and improved quality; a concrete consumer win that also catalysed telecom innovation.
• European Union – Digital Markets Act (DMA): Rather than waiting for harm, the DMA pre-sets “do’s and don’ts” for digital gatekeepers (search, app stores, messengers) to keep markets contestable: interoperability, fair self-preferencing rules, and easier switching. It’s proactive antitrust to create space for smaller players.

Although lax in enforcement, the Competition Commission of India fined Google Rs. 936 crore in one Android case and later issued orders totalling Rs. 2,274 crore for abuse of dominance. Policymakers should use merger limits, market-share caps, structural separation, and interoperability mandates where necessary. These tools are not anti-business but are anti-crony capitalism, pro-competition, and pro-innovation.

2. Put workers and citizens in the room where it happens

Germany's implementation of co-determination serves as a prime example. For companies with >2,000 employees, workers hold half the seats on supervisory boards (the chair breaks ties). This model hasn’t killed German competitiveness; it has anchored long-term decision-making and wage stability across cycles. Mandate worker representation on boards for large firms, and tie executive pay to median-worker pay ratios and long-term metrics.

3. Scale ownership without concentrating power

The cooperative movement that resulted in Amul shows the way. Its cooperative federation channels value back to producers, Amul has grown to Rs. 66,000 crore in turnover (FY25) with group revenues near $10–11 billion, while being owned by millions of dairy farmers. Why shouldn’t ports, infrastructure, and power conglomerates come from such a cooperative foundation? Replicate cooperative or worker-owned models (energy, agri-processing, retail). Offer procurement preferences and patient credit to co-ops and employee-owned firms.

4. Align capital with ethics at scale

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (NBIM), at $2 trillion, excludes or places firms under observation for weapons, coal, severe environmental harms, corruption, and human rights risks; over 100 companies are excluded today. This is stewardship with teeth, not brochureware. Policymakers can create public or mixed-mandate funds with binding exclusion lists, escalation protocols, and voting policies that favour competition, worker voice, and climate integrity (not offset games).

That leads to a concrete win-win policy stack:

Competition by design: Push for hard caps on market share in network industries and have presumptive breakups when thresholds are breached. Look at mandatory data portability and interoperability (DMA-style) to reduce switching costs and moat-building.

Ownership spreaders: Introduce tax credits and procurement boosts for co-ops/employee-owned firms and for IPOs that broaden retail and worker shareholding.

Board-level guardrails: Enforce worker seats on boards in companies above a size threshold, and rationalise executive compensation locked to multi-year value creation and pay-ratio disclosure.

Greed metrics that matter: Publish a “market concentration & inequality dashboard” (Herfindahl indices top-1% wealth share labour share). India’s extreme top-end wealth share (40% ) would trigger automatic reviews of sectors with high concentration.

Climate integrity over indulgences: Channel climate money into verified decarbonization (grids, transit, clean cooking), not offsets of dubious quality; track flows against the $100 billion pledge and push for grants over loans.

Active, not performative, enforcement: Resource antitrust and market regulators to pursue systemic cases (India’s Google cases show the direction of travel). Pair fines with behavioural remedies and, when necessary, structural separation.

There are many reasons why such steps will be far better than mere carbon credits in terms of driving a better planet for human beings. The AT&T case shows that opening chokepoints can drop processes and spur innovation quickly. The scare of antitrust made Google change their ways of data sharing.

Co-determination and cooperatives share the surplus, reducing the anger that skyrocketing inequality produces, anger that can spill into street protests or worse. Norway’s exclusion regime proves giant pools of money can enforce ethical baselines without sacrificing long-term returns.

Carbon exchanges may limp along, but taming corporate greed is the true fulcrum for reconciling prosperity with sustainability. Break monopolies, spread ownership, seat workers at the table, and discipline capital with ethics. These are not utopian dreams but proven levers – from AT&T’s breakup to Norway’s exclusion lists – that redesign markets to serve society rather than strangle it. India needs an architecture where no single group can throttle opportunity. Greed is not a market flaw; it is the market ungoverned. Unless we govern it, it will govern us. Or as one reformed capitalist quipped, “Carbon credits trade guilt; greed control trades futures.”

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