Cap-and-Trade Protects the Environment
Carbon trading -- also known as cap-and-trade -- protects the environment by setting a total cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
The world's leading scientists believe we have to cap US greenhouse gas emissions at a level that is 50-80% below current emissions by the year 2050 in order to prevent the worst damage from climate change. The first part of cap-and-trade – "the cap" -- does this. A cap sets a total limit on all emissions from covered sectors -- which, depending on how the program is designed, can be nearly the entire economy.
A cap requires "an allowance" in order to emit greenhouse gases. Typically, one allowance allows the emission of 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide or equivalent. Since the government only makes available a limited number of allowances, and since it is illegal for a covered sector or industry to emit greenhouse gases without an allowance, the total number of emissions is strictly controlled. A well-designed cap-and-trade system includes steep penalties for any covered entity emitting greenhouse gases without an allowance -- therefore providing an effective means of keeping emissions below a safe level.
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essentially at the cost of humankind. As currently designed, cap&trade will decimate not only the US economy but entire countries. After all, Cap and Trade is in effect in California, and many large businesses have left. There is no concrete scientific proof (no computer models allowed) that current CO2 levels or rates of increase, even if stopped at todays values, would not result in any significant change in climate for any length of time.
Thing of it is, currently the biggest polluting countries (China, India) are not included in current global efforts to do the same thing.
I think the case against Cap & Trade or similar is easily the EU/UK.
All sorts of Fraud & Trading suspensions occurring & all with extremely minimal emissions changes & on average a 1.6% increase for all EU ?!
This business of "cap-and-trade" sounds interesting at face value, but the problems I have with it are as follows:
1. Do we really know for sure that "green house gases" really are? How much evidence is there that a hundredth of a percent increase in CO2 (with respect to atmosphere as a whole) will cause any real consequential damages?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0320-11.htm
(when put in a percentage, 280 to 379 parts per million of CO2 means going from .028% to .0379%, a hundredth of a percent increase in how much content of the atmosphere is made up of CO2)
2. Limiting what a business can do in terms of emissions means limiting what the economy as a whole can do. If it's worth potentially trillions of dollars in costs (according to one critic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUlGoaAOzqA ), then so be it. But I have yet to see the evidence for this.
In response to your first point, no, we do not know conclusively how increased CO2 levels will affect the atmosphere. We do, however, know that the CO2 diffuses into the oceans, creating carbonic acid which kills plankton and as a result anything higher on the food chain:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=169
I apologize for how dated the article is, I think it's still valid though.
As for historic CO2 levels, granted they might have been higher millions of years ago; the problem is not with the amount of CO2 but with the rate at which it is increasing, as you can see from this graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
Were the rates to alter over thousands of years, as they naturally do, perhaps plankton would be able to adapt to the conditions and evolve some defense mechanism. As it stands right now, the carbonic acid in the ocean is destroying the world's coral reefs and everything that inhabits them. Perhaps cap and trade is not perfect, but I think a tax hike is a small price to pay to save all sea life.
Please avoid citing realclimate.org - they are a collection of propaganda fanatics perpetuating this scam with deception and outright lies. All you have to do is read any of their 'debunking' articles to see how they lie and obscure the argument with tenuous obscure references and complex convoluted logic - and then triumphantly state that they have debunked the skeptics argument - which they never do.
A link documenting this is -
http://www.conservativeblogwatch.com/2009/12/19/leftist-green-party-member-exposed-using-wikipedia-to-preach-enviro-doom /
Many others including media articals can also be found
Isn't there likewise issues with trust of Wikipedia given that the vast & significant majority of Global Warming & Anthropogenic Warming articles having been updated/edited by just the one person.
There is a plethora of material available on the internet , that website was simply the first result that came up with a Google search. No one is doubting that increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to increased carbonic acid in the oceans; as to its effect on sea life there is controversy.
" http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=169 "
Likewise, we could take the question back further and ask what the effects are per man-made quantity of CO2 towards plankton.
"As for historic CO2 levels, granted they might have been higher millions of years ago; the problem is not with the amount of CO2 but with the rate at which it is increasing, as you can see from this graph:"
Indeed, no one debates that they are increasing but if we can't tell what it's effects would be, then on what basis are we taking action?
"As it stands right now, the carbonic acid in the ocean is destroying the world's coral reefs and everything that inhabits them."
Yes, but to what extent is man-made activity to blame?
Were is this going to get the capital for renewables? From YOU and ME by the Carbon Cap and Trade tax scheme that takes effect in 2012. The carbon cap and trade programs turns the electric, manufactories,heavy trucks, cars, airlines etc into tax collectors for the state. It’s just a tax scheme.!! run by the CARB. Once the gov. get’s into the elect. etc. rates they’ll always remain high and never will go down, just like any other state taxes. The Fed’s already have their multi. Trillion dollar program S.3036 to take effect in 2012. It’s so bad that it has a 900 Billion dollar welfare program for the poor to offset their higher electric and fuel costs. It’s a sleeper to most people but to the politicians and the environmentalist groups who benifit the most from this tax scheme, it's their payday. Nuclear is 1/3 to build than renewables, cheaper($.016 KWH), cleaner(0),and doesn’t cover millions of square miles of State and Fed. lands,runs 24/7 plus the electric companies could finance them by themselves with little gov. help. Plus they can be built by existing tower lines. You want cheap electricty or do you want higher taxes, electric rates, goods and services, with a 5 million work crew tending the renewables, FOREVER? But it’s not a option with these focks because it doesn’t have the cash flow/tax flow/ new gov. programs/ gov. grants/jobs program that renewables offer. Drilling for more oil will keep the costs down for the American Public while it takes 10 years to build anything and get our act together on a cost effective ways to do it. It should be everything and not the gov. picking winners and losers at the expense of the American consummer or taxpayer.