What is Carbon Trading?
November 30th, 2009
Carbon trading (or the “Cap and Trade” system) is a way of letting “The Market” sort out Climate Change. Under the scheme, all companies are issued a number of “Carbon Permits” to trade and sell, with the companies that pollute the least receiving the most permits. The idea is that developing countries that don’t pollute much can sell their leftover permits to countries that do.
The issues
The problems with Carbon Trading were really there from the start. It was a system created by advisers to the Government such as Shell, BP, Goldman Sachs, etc, who are only going to be looking at ways to profit from Global Warming, whilst protecting their industries at the same time. If I was being bad, I’d like to decide my own punishment too!
Carbon Trading is not about keeping Fossil Fuels in the ground, it promotes keeping the Dinosaur industries going as long as possible, whilst preventing developing countries to get ahead once they sell of their rights to pollute.
Carbon Trading is now an industry, after it came into force in 2005 in the EU. The price of Carbon is always so low, that it’s cheaper to buy credits than to pay for structural changes that will make your business more environmentally friendly. Now with the recession there are even more Carbon Credits on the market, which makes the price even lower, which means polluting has never been so cheap and easy!
Among the better solutions are “Carbon Rationing”, which would set a limit for all businesses and make sure they work towards polluting less.
Further reading
Carbon Trading – how it works and why it fails
BBC – Q&A – The Carbon Trade
Personal Carbon Trading (IE – Carbon Rationing)
4 Responses to “What is Carbon Trading?”
Leave a Reply
Twitter stuff
- Haha, 80's dating video montage: http://youtu.be/0bomkgXeDkE! #wtf 5 days ago
- Team America - still funny as fark! 1 week ago
- @MrChuckD My favourite's still - "Bill Withers - live at Carnegie Hall" - that album never dates :) 1 week ago
- Dabs & Myla artwork and interview. Cool stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDQC4WM8cgw&feature=player_embedded#! #art 1 week ago
- Had I seen this before the election, I may have voted for the #sexparty - funny shit http://youtu.be/tdEVVW_ahnE 1 week ago
- More updates...
[...] some lobbyists and delegates are pushing for carbon trading, which puts a price on carbon and floats it on the stock market, so you can buy your way out of [...]
[...] December 11th, 2009 The COP15 summit is actually going OK, depending on who you talk to! All the developing & developed countries are putting offers on the table. The problem is, the offers are too little and the methods to achieve them are the wrong ones, like Carbon Trading. [...]
[...] were some things I was there for personally too. I wanted to see the march push for NO Carbon Trading (or Cap & Trade), in the negotiations. The leaders can set all the reduction levels they want, [...]
[...] Carbon trading is a flawed idea, full stop. It was created by a bunch of already rich people to let them profit from global warming, whilst not actually stopping emissions. The system is overly complicated and open to all kinds of corruption. Leaving the market to solve a problem created by the market is like giving a fat kid pies to lose weight. You can read more about Carbon Trading here [...]