It seems that nothing can stop a stupid idea that gets up a good head of steam. We’ve seen the truth of this much of late in the marketplace.
Home ownership is for everyone, one idea ran. The sub-prime fallout is the result. Derivatives are a substitute for regulation. That bit of idiocy has cost trillions to date and still counting. And oh, yes, we have to go into Iraq because they may have weapons of mass destruction, no proof that this is the case is required.
It is therefore not so strange, perhaps, that cap-and-trade has become the accepted, the sure to be implemented way chosen by our masters in Washington to check global warming and other environment angst. Not only has this been peddled as the market-based solution to pollution (and who can doubt that the market is the solution to virtually everything) but a newly added twist to charge companies who buy these right to pollute credits could generate a heap of much needed cash for a government deeply in the red.
So what’s wrong with cap-and trade? Well, for one thing, it won’t work to reduce emissions. Let me repeat that. This approach will not, and I repeat, will not, and in case you haven’t followed me up to now, it will not reduce reduce polluting emissions. The idea that more efficient companies will become even more efficient pollution reducers in order to generate salable emissions credits for those who wish to continue polluting is plain dumb.
No company that meets its own emission limits does so exactly. It is impossible to do do exactly. But under this program any reduction by a company under its own cap that would have been achieved anyway now becomes a salable credit.
Think of a highway with a 60 mile an hour speed limit that is closely enforced. Would it improve overall safety if motorists diving at 55 were allowed to sell a 5 mile an hour speeding credit to motorists who want to exceed the speed limit legally by that amount?
Cap-and-trade doesn’t help the environment. It hurts the environment. Tell a 10 year old that selling the right to pollute helps the environment and the kid will think you’re crazy. But this same kid would have told you that lending money to people who would never be able to pay it back was crazy, too. And you wouldn’t have listened to the kid then either.
Forgive them, Mother Gaia. They have just outgrown their 10 year old smarts…