How will a Cap and Trade System help global warming?

You are probably right about Cap and Trade being a glorified shell game. Yes, cap and trade did work very well in reducing SO2 emissions, but that was because those who were buying the offsets were large companies who had lawyers and accountants to make sure that those who took their money were honest. Today, when someone flies to Europe and wants to ease his/her conscience by paying someone to plant trees has no guarantee that the person who is supposed to plant trees will not instead use the money to buy a Hummer.

Another problem with present day Cap and Trade is the lack of transparency. When I google "co2 emissions by country," rather than getting the official statistics, I get links to Wikipedia, blogs and political parties, rather that to any site which could be called an official site. This is because Canada is the only nation to sign the Kyoto Accord to admit that it will not meet its Kyoto targets. If the actual statistics were published, they would show that other nations have also failed to meet their Kyoto targets and can only say that they will meet their targets, only on paper, by sending money to China.

A better plan is to require electrical utilities to come up with plans to phase out coal and natural gas fired power generation and to use renewable and nuclear power instead. A tax MAY be required on gasoline to subsidize hydrogen from renewable sources, but I am open to suggestions for alternatives to such a tax.

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aq...

Well it helps the Democrats, because they are able to hide the fact that they are creating a regressive tax designed to hit the middle class the most. Given that Obama promised no tax increase for those making under $250K, they need a way to hide the amount of taxes they really intend on placing on the middle class. While some argue that it has worked before, they ignore that the cases in which it worked were so much smaller that what we are talking about for CO2 as to make the comparison absurd. The cases where C&T has been implemented in other countries have had many problems. It doesn't really matter though. They would ahve had a very difficult time getting C&T through a dem-controlled house and senate, under the current situation, they haven't a prayer of passing C&T.

Hey Dook is of course incorrect, the level of socialism of any society can be measured by the amount of taxation. Surely he is not arguing that if we were taxed at 90%, this would not be considered pure socialism. Socalism is defined as "Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy."

And yes Hey Dook, we are nearing our way toward socialism. In fact, I would suggest that it is easy to argue that the federal govt already significantly plans and controls the economy. The real problem is that we do not hold the federal govt accountable when they mess up.

Look at the Banking problems we have just had. The federal govt pushed the banks into making those absurd loans to people who had no hope of repaying them. Still many fools blame the banks and praise the govt for cracking down on the banks. They even say patently ridiculous things like the recession was caused by the lack of oversight. No it wasn't!!! It was caused by politicians pushing a social agenda of increasing the house ownership in the US.

There is the real problem. Even when socialism so obviously fails and causes problems in our economy, the socialists act like their agenda was not to blame and ask for more govt intervention. Unfortunately, people like Hey Dook are far to politically motivated to see the lie. They hate repubs so much, that they are unable to see how bad the dems are. Here is a little hint for all. THEY ARE ALL BAD! They are politicians, that no one should trust as far as they can throw them. Are we entirely sure that giving them more money and more power, because they say they can solve our problems is actually a good idea?

Baccheus,

Good job demonstrating that warmers are as likely to use weather as evidence of their climate hypotheses. Guess warmers do not know weather from climate either.

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Actually, Cap and Trade had worked expremely well for acid rain. The great thing about the concept is that is uses the free market to efficiently adapt and it rewards effective innovation and technological advances by putting value on them. When resources are given for free, they are abused. This goes for land, minerals, water, or unpoluted air. Just consider: how big would you make your back yard if land was free? How much food would your eat if all food were free? How much water would you use? How much of any resource would anyone or any producing company use if it were free. Rather than telling a company how much they can pollute, cap-and-trade puts a price on polluting and allows those who advance technologically to sell their rights at a profit. There more they can reduce their polluting, the more profit they can make. I've added a link to Smithsonian magazine with a bit of history of the concept. This was the econonic conservatives approach to environment back in the days when there were econonic conservatives in this country.

There were some great questions about whether or not cap-and-trade could ever be used to control CO2. The shell-game component comes in the form of "offsets". If a company can offset the CO2 it creates by, for example, planting a forest then they'd be allowed to create more CO2. But it is nearly impossible define, track and verify the claimed offsets if they are allowed internationally (ie, a company claims that it planted a forest in China -- maybe they deforested it for the lumber, then replanted it.)

It doesn't matter now. Cap and Trade is dead in this country. America has already voted and decide to let global warming run its course for at least two years. In two years, the only way America will change its mind is if we have suffered a Russia-like killing heat wave and/or the water shortages in the west have become severe enough that even the most ignorat of us realize that we have water shortages. If global warming should thus become apparent enough in two years, people will finally realize that we have already let it go too long to start solutions and that we have great costs to pay that wll be enormous strains on the economy around the world. At that point, America would again over-react and implement harsh regulation to curb the decline of oxygen in the atmosphere. Cap and Trade with all its problems did offer a way to avoid putting massive costs on our future generations with hurting the economy. But we decided that we want none of that.

It's a relatively gentle, free-market approach to limiting CO2 emissions. Since CO2 is really only a problem in the aggregate, it's not essential that every single company reduces CO2 emissions, just that our overall emissions go down. So, instead of either setting a cap on CO2 so high that it's useless, or setting a low cap and forcing every company everywhere to meet it, cap and trade lets the government set a relatively low cap, that most companies can meet, but allows companies that are well under the limit to profit from it by selling their share to less efficient companies.

This means a few things. Companies with a factory/plant that would be too expensive to upgrade can buy credits instead of shutting down. Companies with bright ideas to reduce their energy use and/or emissions can use their efficiency as a source of income.

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It wouldn't, as "global warming" has occurred since Earth's inception. For nearly 5 billion years Ma Earth has been warming or cooling - long before our evil factories and SUVs.

Cap & Trade is dead anyway. The most important person in the world is the one who leaked the East Anglia emails, exposing the inner workings of the fraud to the world.

It won't,it will just help mega corporations who can buy a 1000's of acres of rainforest at a few cents an acre to carbon offset the cost and destroy all smaller firms and help with the dismantling of the middle classes.

Cap and Trade is just an energy tax.

I personally think it's a giant Socialist scam.

But for the religious souls who believe in AGW....

The elevated energy costs encourage conservation & the tax revenues help Government invest in green energy.

If it was not a corpse it would Help GE with their useless carbon credits.

Goldman Saks would make billions trading them .

Gas , Electric, and oil will cost people more . (No Maam ) Boxer said people would get

checks in the mail to make up for it . Its a Ponzi scheme .

@Baccheus, your so confused. Youre trying to compare buying land, food and products with burning carbon and other fuels to make products we need to use.

And, in regards to the first (or second answerers comment), no taxing is not Socialism, but over taxing is. Look at the European countries who over tax. They can only be described as quasi-socialist. Whats the difference between the left and right... left more taxes, more social services, more govt... right, less taxes, less social services and less govt.

Social services.... social... um, ... socialism... Learn your facts buddy.