The Story of Cap and Trade

The Story of Cap and Trade is a short fast paced video looking at how the world deals with the use of fossil fuels and how we deal with carbon emissions, the video looks at the discussion about climate problems at Copenhagen where they try to find a solution. Carbon emission is part of everyday lifestyle, no matter what we are doing, we are emitting some sort of carbon emission of some form or another, hence the term, carbon foot print. This can be from commuting to and from using transport such as cars, bus and train, daily items that we use that are manufactured require an exhaustive amount of fossil fuels which would lead to all sorts of problems

The solution that they came up with is “Cap and Trade”, hence the title of the video. What cap and trade is, is where government would set a yearly cap on the amount of carbon emissions that a company can emit. All sounds great in theory, but this posed a lot of problems. One problem was that companies were cheating their way into getting these permits or abusing these permits in order to make money. One example would be companies saying that they have decreased their carbon emissions, but in fact, they havnt done anything at all, thus receiving payment for this.

“Companies can even earn offsets for not doing anything at all”

This really sums it up for me, Cap and Trade was about being more aware about the amount of carbon emissions and rewarding companies that do with benefit, but not in this case, the companies that do aren’t getting any real benefits at all, there is a lack of incentive for companies as they see others who don’t do anything reaping the same rewards.

“We don’t need to let these guys design the solution. We – us, our governments - can make laws and do it ourselves”

I personally love this quote, partly the fact that it is true in every sense, no one likes to be told, especially on a scale of this size, like I said before, sure everything sounds great and all, but in practice, Cap and Trade doesn’t work at all, and I cant believe no one saw it coming.

“These guys don’t seem to realize that the simplest way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere is to leave it safely in the ground”

Common sense really, the less we take out, the less gets put out. That is the most simplest solution I personally believe and one that would work the best, instead of limiting carbon emissions, why not limit the amount of materials being used?, just an idea…..

Overall, the video was short and fun to watch, very interesting and may put people into a debate. I think I may watch the video a second time just to get more ideas……