Thanks Carol. The data on the site is alarming. More people should be looking at ways to promote alternative technologies that can reduce carbon emissions, and find other ways of reducing emissions.

Nine Eastern states have begun to devise their own system of greenhouse gas trading.

Here is a link that might be useful: cd

How times have changed. It was once a sign of progress and prosperity to have smokestacks belching.

Now they are probably belching in China.

I agree with Althea and also thank Carol. Althea, maybe it's just my computer having a bad day. But I could not connect at the link you gave. I did connect to another site. I read at "Number 8" until my eyes and brain hurt.

Is there an economist in the house?

Before I went to the Bellona site, I tried thinking through this pollution credits scheme all by myself. Big mistake - maybe. Maybe not. Here's how my thinking went...first, people agree to trade in a particular commodity. There has to be some incentive to trade, some mutual benefit realized from exchanges. So far, so good.

And then, all economic h**l broke loose! I tried to answer the questions that I couldn't help asking. But I couldn't answer them:

1. How does trading in any commodity, in any manner, result in the reduction of supply and demand for the commodity, until the commodity is extinct?

2. Isn't the fact that trade is occurring a reflection of a state of supply and demand? And isn't any state of supply and demand a reflection of traders' incentives to perpetuate the existence of the commodity?

Taking one more stab at getting it...pollution: bad. Polluter 1 (P1) and Polluter 2 (P2) both want to get to zero pollution. P1 makes more pollution than some "index" that both polluters refer to. P2 makes less pollution than the index.

So...P2 sells his "goods" to P1. That is, P2 sells the value of the amount of pollution P2 produces that is less than the index. P2 has more money now, and can use that money to lower his own pollution even further below the index, or below any new, lower index. Again, so far, so good.

Meanwhile, P1 has less money now. P1 has...what? Purchased "grace?" I'll assume that. "Grace" equals the "goods" P2 sold to P1. So P1 has paid to not have to pay his own way, all the way, to get his pollution down to the level of the index or below. But P1 is still polluting more than the level of the index. So P1 must pay more still, to eliminate any of the difference between his remaining excess pollution that is above the index, and the "grace" of pollution purchased. And if P1 cannot afford to eliminate that difference...then what?

Meanwhile, back at P2's ranch, the payment from P1 helps P2 to purchase...what? An equivalent value in further reduced pollution? (Reality doesn't always work like that.)

HELLLLLLLP!!!!

Someone, PLEASE explain, if you can, how the emissions trading system "works" to zero-out pollution. Nothing I have read yet makes sense. And none of my thinking through the scheme so far has led me to conclude the scheme works.

Here is a link that might be useful: Bellona? Bologna?

Not tonight, dear, I have a headache from reading your long post.

Where do you get the notion that this is a pollution-reducing scheme? The system is designed to extract penalty fees from the gross emitters, those unable or unwilling to cut emissions down to agreed upon base limits. These penalty fees are offered to less developed nations with their limited industrialization and thus low emmissions. The gross emitting nations thus continue excess emissions, the excess applied to credits for non-emission (so to speak) generated by the underdeveloped countries.

The apparent free-market solution is just another form of foreign aid give-away, or moving wealth from the productive developed nations to the undeveloped regions so as to keep them off our arses about co2 and global warming.

As long as a third of the world population (China and India) are allowed unlimited emissions so that they might catch up with our level of production/consumption, I have no hope that any wealth-distributing system will work to decrease overall emissions of greenhouse and other gases and aerosols.

When "they" call the Kyoto Protocol flawed, "they" have good reasons.

Uh-oh, another unintended consequence, my fault. Marshall I hope your head feels better soon.

First, Marshall we agree on the fallacy of using wealth re-distribution to curb or prevent emissions.

I got the notion that the trade in pollution credits is a pollution-reducing scheme from a number of articles. Efforts involving sulfur dioxide seem to have gotten a lot of press. China evidently is getting into the game.

Here is a link that might be useful: China Plans

CO2 is not a pollutant while sulfur dioxide is. The latter is controlable via scrubber technologies, fore or aft the burning of China's high-sulfur coals. CO2 is considered a greenhouse gas while sulfur dioxide acts more as an aerosol of limited shelf-life, so to speak, acting mostly to lower incident solar radiation reaching the surface.

All the credit trading blurbs I've read have dealt with CO2 and carbon sinks. Countries with relatively large carbon sinks (reputed to be forests) "sell" the credited carbon sunk in the forest to the producers of excessive co2 emissions. There is no reduction in emissions in this scheme.