Cathryn Hannay
Oct 2, 2009 5:00pm
In Europe, and in small circles in the USA, pollution has become a huge talk group. Just today I was asked by a man on the corner if I would donate to his political cause. I kindly said no and threw out my paper and plastic cup. I asked him about his cause and he spewed out his memorized lines. I asked him a few things to catch him up. He said they were trying to get large cooperations to ease up on their pollutions emissions through funded political movement. He said it was already working in Europe. I asked him how. He told me they charge companies more for emissions and pollution. I asked him about small business. He said it didn’t affect them. I scoffed. He said they would just have to start up green. I pointed out the cost and he repeated his last answer. I left feeling very uninformed. So I decided to look it up!
Carbon trading is sort of like an IOU for pollution. The UN decided what amount of pollution is acceptable and the business decides how much more than the acceptable limit that they will use. Of course if they use less than the legal amount they get money in return. Of course the amount of industrial emissions is gauged often by the business itself. And if the cap is too high, many businesses will be more careless about emissions.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/carbon-trading-what-europe-can-actually-teach-us
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