Carbon Trading — It Simply Doesn't Work

Europeans tried that - the system brought windfalls for some, higher utility bills for the rest, but little benefit to climate.

BRUSSELS: The European Union started with the most high-minded of ecological goals: to create a market that would encourage companies to reduce greenhouse gases by making them pay for each ton emitted into the atmosphere.

Four years later, the carbon trading system has created a multibillion-euro windfall for some of the continent's biggest polluters, with little or no noticeable benefit to the environment so far.

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What a terrible news. Who could have thought that letting polluters pay someone else to take the blame for their emissions would produce no results, except benefiting the polluters themselves? Who could have thought that emission permits would be practically given away, rather than sold? Who could have thought that all the extra costs would be simply passed along to the consumers? Oh, wait! That was actually part of the plan:

The initiative also included another, quieter goal: to raise the price of electricity by letting utilities pass along permit costs, thereby encouraging energy efficiency and innovation among customers as well.

That "quieter goal" was achieved. Utility prices did go up, to the cheers of a handful of Gaia fanatics (that would want to reduce our standards of living to the third world level), enraging ordinary Europeans who have to work more to pay the higher utility bills. Did it help the environment in any way? Of course it didn't!

For one simple reason: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is minuscule. And the man-made contribution constitutes only a small part of all the carbon dioxide that's in the atmosphere. So even if every country in the world met its Kyoto targets and capped its CO₂ emissions at 6% below the 1990 level, the effect on the atmosphere would be negligible. Implementing Kyoto won't reduce the number of smog days in Toronto or Ottawa.

And, unlike the mythical "global warming", (which has never been confirmed,) smog and air pollution are known health hazards, that result in ~21,000 deaths a year in Canada alone. Instead of being so preoccupied with reducing "greenhouse gas emissions", governments of all levels should be working together to set up an action plan that would make our air and water cleaner. The plan should include stricter emission and waste treatment standards and polluters should be held individually responsible for abiding by them - with no opportunity to pay their way out.

If the Conservative government survives the budget vote next January - they should reintroduce the original Clean Air Act. The one that contained no reference to Kyoto or carbon taxes, targeting smog and air pollution instead.