Newsweek, “Global Warming: No Easy Fix“:
Current emissions-trading schemes have proved to be little more than a shell game, allowing polluters in the developed world to shift the burden of making cuts onto factories in the developing world. Too often factory owners use the additional profits banked from carbon credits to expand their dirty factories. Even more worrying, emissions trading may have set back the battle against climate change by diverting investment from renewable-energy technology, which arguably is essential to any long-term solution. So far, the real winners in emissions trading have been polluting factory owners who can sell menial cuts for massive profits, and the brokers who pocket fees each time a company buys or sells the right to pollute. “Carbon trading is a promising strategy for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” says Dan Esty, director of Yale’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy, “but the current structures have serious flaws.”
