The Moderate Voice - Latest Comments in Wall Street Moves To Destroy The Environment

Re: Wall Street Moves To Destroy The Environment

mikkel — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:12:36 -0000

Yes Paul there is. And I believe that it gets more restrictive at a faster and faster rate, so companies ahead (or behind) of the curve will have an exponential benefit (penalty).

Re: Wall Street Moves To Destroy The Environment

PaulSilver — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:54:52 -0000

I thought that there is suppose to be a mechanism in cap and trade to regularly make the pollution standards more restrictive over time to force a gradual reduction of overall emissions?

Re: Wall Street Moves To Destroy The Environment

Slamfu — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:59:08 -0000

Damn skippy! I think the entire self policing nature of the free market is probably one of the biggest marketing/PR scams ever put forward by those who wish to pervert Adam Smith's teachings for their own ends. So many would-be amateur capitalists buy into that BS. In a way its nice, it lets you know who is full of shit right away without any additional investigation needed.

And screw the sub-prime fiasco, we can go back so far for the various catastrophes that have resulted from deregs we go full circle to the S&L's bailouts in the 80's and see where most of us heard of George W. Bush for the first time.

Re: Wall Street Moves To Destroy The Environment

mikkel — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:52:27 -0000

Michael, your analysis overlooks the key aspect of the whole program: it's up to the government to decide what the caps are and to have regulation with extremely harsh punishment for going over them. The reason why the European system has failed is not because of the idea itself, but because the governments had an incentive to give out as many credits to their own companies as the companies wanted. They even artificially inflated the historical pollution numbers to make sure they could do this.

The cap and trade system is not a free market regulatory device.....it is an aggregate regulator that the state must be willing to enforce, and the free market is used to give gains to companies that go beyond what they are required to do. Therefore, I think your criticism is slightly misdirected, as it should be at the politicians that refuse to actually use the program as it was meant.