Both the private sector and the US Congress are working in opposition to the same scheme that is supposed to stop and hopefully reverse global warming: the “cap-and-trade” system of “credits of carbon”.
This is how the scheme works:
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is known to be the number one polluter of our atmosphere and therefore the number one culprit in global warming. Private companies, and especially utilities that produce energy through fossil fuels such as coal, are among the main producers of CO2. And right now there is no limit to the amount of CO2 such companies can produce.
So someone suggested creating an artificial “shortage” of CO2, which would be a very good thing.
How do you do that? Passing a law to limit the amount of CO2 that each company can produce.
But what happens if a company produces LESS than the allowed amount? Or what if another company needs to produce MORE carbon dioxide for various reasons?
Then the company that is below its “carbon emission quota” can sell that “right to pollute” on the free market to the company that needs to emit more carbon into the atmosphere. Therefore, such “carbon permits” can be bought and sold like regular shares on the stock market.
The cap and trade system is already in use in Europe at this writing (March 2007) and the prices of such permits have tripled in the last two years.
An increasing number of giant corporations in the US now support the cap-and-trade system thinking they need to be at the table when the nature and amount of caps are decided. I think they are being very smart. Either it has a role in determining the rules of the cap-and-trade game or it lives by its ramifications. You are either sitting behind the wheel of this cap-and-trade behemoth or you will be hit by it.
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