Here’s a revolutionary idea for building a mouse trap. The new trap would have the usual opening where the mouse can enter in search of food. But if its inconvenient for the mouse to stay, it can exit from a back door that’s provided for this option. Since the mouse now has two choices (stay or leave), this is a free market solution to mouse catching.
Sound like a good way to trap mice? If you think so, you’ll love the cap and trade solution now being adopted in many places to reduce global warming.
Such a system has been in place in the EU for awhile and failed badly. But so what. It’s nonetheless moving through Congress in this country, and in the interim ten Northeast states have their own cap and trade programs cranking up and California is fixing to join the throng.
By selling pollution credits to polluters who find it temporarily inconvenient to get under their emissions caps, these states hope to rake in billions. And let’s not forget Wall Street in this great environmental money-making gambit — as if that were possible. Some of The Street’s leading firms will collect their own huge sums from brokering these deals.
Of course, to check global warming and save the current natural order we could just cap carbon emissions and enforce this policy strictly. As strictly as governments do these days with, say, parking violations. But that would only actually reduce emissions and not harness the mighty power of the marketplace. Cap and trade, rather than cap and enforce, is so, so much more au courant.
Well, gotta go. I sell pencils and shine shoes, and do a brisk trade in front of the local Goldman Sachs building because that company is so dedicated to helping small businesses like me these days. Oh, did I mention? GS is also a big player in the cap and trade business. And if they’re involved, you know it’s gonna serve the public interest really, really well.