Thank goodness the fine activists over at Alcoa, Chevron, General Electric, Shell, Southern California Edison, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Barclay’s Capital and Goldman Sachs have set up this carbon exchange system. They really care so much about global warming...or cooling....or whatever. And in the off chance this ends up being a massive cynical scam to create trillions of derivative garbage, while carbon waivers are granted to inside players, and it fails to effect greenhouse gas emissions .....these stalwarts of environmentalism could always trash the global economy again to drive demand back down.

Cap-and-trade is the wrong approach. Here's the right one:

1) A set tax is levied across the board on all businesses of every kind.

2) Reducing your total carbon emissions reduces the proportion of the tax owed (i.e., 10% reduction in emissions means 10% less tax owed. Zero emissions means zero tax owed).

3) No allowance for carbon credit offsets or trading of any kind.

Do this, and the industry will find a way to manufacture zero emissions vehicles and high capacity batteries.

My understanding is that cap-and-trade is a bit like having congestion charges*. The rich can keep doing what they want just by paying a tiny bit more money for it

*by which I mean charging a toll to go into an area, say, downtown. London has it and it's very successful regarding getting people on public transport**, but for those who are very rich they get clearer roads.

**public transport is waay better in England than it is here.

@2: You may be right, but policy is formed by real legislators in real life. Considering how hard it was to make cap and trade fly nationally, I think it's pretty impressive that a state that includes Santa Barbara and Orange Counties has been at the vanguard. Let's not forget the thirty years of Eyman-esque policies that have also rendered the state almost ungovernable.

4,

Thats why my tax scheme requires the deportation of Tim Eyman prior to enactment.

@6: Count me among your most ardent supporters.

I am confident the standard tricks deployed by Wallstreet crooks - buy something bogus low; sell more-bogus high - will be quite handy for cap-n-trade.

Let's just build more global warming quadrupling Deep Bore Tunnels everywhere in Seattle and we can turn this city from a Green Paradise into an industrial Hell on Earth.

Right?

aw man, it took will 11 posts to mention the tunnel. now i lost another bet.

@11 We need those boring machines to create the underground where our grandchildren will escape from the surface dweller's hell.

#3

Cap and trade is what will allow coal trains to plow through Washington.

We need the 5 story boring machine to drive the sleeping rats onto downtown streets! Rat City !

@12 I was partying with the 36th.

Read the appendices and you'll see what I mean.

Look, if it wasn't for the UW, Seattle would have actually INCREASED global warming emissions already. We can't do everything for you.