yo i spent like 30 mins trying to figure this out readin my textbook and your 4 min video just explained it so much better than my textbook could. thank you
This is more of a legal or organization question more than an environmental question -- with cap-and-trade measures, what stops a business from saying they will emit XYZ amount of pollution and then keeping the factory silent for the entire year? Or, to phrase it differently, what would stop me from declaring to the federal government that I would emit 1000 lbs of pollution when I was only going to emit perhaps 200 lbs of pollution? I imagine that this forgery would be a great way to make some sort of permit mill and gain lots of money selling the rights to emit pollution where pollution was never going to be emitted in the first place.
The problem is that it gives an asset to someone that is already causing the problem, and knew they did. So a direct comparison to a pollution tax is reasonable. And then there's the politics of which one is easier to sell to the public
Suppose Bangladesh and China actually had to reduce pollution? Cause right now we are just cleaning air while they continue to pollute more. This is a world issue. We all use the same air.
Talk about jumping over steps and reaching a hilarious conclusion... Of course you can't reduce the same amount of pollution like that, you just reduce the pollution that is economically sound to reduce. This only takes into account the low term economical profits and ignores the possible social dangers.
I think it depends on the "cap" level set. So if you have weak governments in the hands of lobbiests and climate change deniers (or the got are deniers themselves!). Then they'll keep issuing permits which effectively allow corps to keep polluting as much as they want. But if they really implement at strict cap then they'll be able to reduce pollution in the most economic way. The cap is the key part. Of course though if all those savings are spent on fancy cars and holidays in distant climes, then there's no point!!
