Carbon Credits
Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:58 pm
The topic of carbon credits seems to become more newsworthy every day. For more information, Wikipedia already has articles about Carbon Credits and Personal Carbon Trading.
For someone to be issued a credit for something, my understanding is that someone else needs to own it first. From what I can tell, governments issue carbon credits to businesses and individuals and then assign a carbon cost or quota on greenhouse-gas activities. I have trouble understanding how many credits should be issued and how one would go about assigning carbon quotas. Beside the UK and the EU, I am not aware of anyone else actively trading carbon credits.
Is carbon credit trading a realistic way to reduce greenhouse gases?
For someone to be issued a credit for something, my understanding is that someone else needs to own it first. From what I can tell, governments issue carbon credits to businesses and individuals and then assign a carbon cost or quota on greenhouse-gas activities. I have trouble understanding how many credits should be issued and how one would go about assigning carbon quotas. Beside the UK and the EU, I am not aware of anyone else actively trading carbon credits.
Is carbon credit trading a realistic way to reduce greenhouse gases?