Many critics of a U.S. cap-and-trade system point out the fact that a similar system in Europe, on which the U.S. proposal is partially based, has been a failure. And, unfortunately, these critics are mostly correct - the European program, which started about 3 years ago, has not been effective in lowering carbon emissions.
The problem was that the cap was set too high, thus giving companies no incentive to cut emissions, and creating no market for trading carbon credits. Well, the Europeans have been hard at work on making the system better, as reported in this recent article in the Times of London. No system as large and complex as a carbon-trading market is going to be one-hundred percent effective right out of the blocks. But hopefully U.S. policymakers can use the European system as an example of what does not work, as well as what does. I’m confident that, with these lessons in hand, we can implement an effective market for carbon trading.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Cap and Trade, International Environmental News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
