The bottom line of cap and trade is to improve the environment. By limiting the limit of emissions that can be released by organizations over the next forty years, supporters of cap and trade legislation hope to reduce them by 80 percent. That sounds great in practice, but will it actually work?
Some estimate that if all were to go according to plan, cap and trade could combat global warming. Although the legislation is expected to have harmful effects on the economy, destroying American jobs, giving competing nations the economic advantage over us, and costing the American consumer untold millions of dollars, if it begins to turn back the tables on climate change, isn't it worth it? Climate Scientist Chip Knappenberger said that cap and trade would reduce the earth's future temperature by no more than 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. That's a lot of trouble to not even get a full degree change over the course of a century.
The bad news is that those estimates are the good ones. Some predict that cap and trade wouldn't reduce emissions at all. Opponents need to look no further than Europe for proof.
Europe passed cap and trade legislation in 2005. The Emissions Trading Scheme as it was called, did not turn out to be as easy as some hoped. Reducing emissions is a very difficult and expensive practice, and it didn't even work. Emissions actually rose in Europe after the Emissions Trading Scheme was passed.
Despite lofty rhetoric from European leaders that stricter rules will be put in place and the plan will actually work, support for it is dwindling. Various organizations ranging from German automakers and Italian steel makers to Russian energy companies that cutoff the supply of natural gas to Western Europe show how so many rely on coal and how delicate the politics around international energy can be.
Even under the unlikeliest but best of circumstances, cap and trade wouldn't be able to improve the environment. If Europe and the United States managed to cut through the big dollars, fruad, and unethical activities of lobbyists and the companies that stand to gain or lose millions of dollars from this legislation, the rest of the emerging industrialized world doesn't want to play by the same rules. It doesn't do much good for a handful of countries to reduce emissions while nations like India and China continue to pump their own emissions into the environment.
It's definitely unexpected that the cap and trade could possible do exactly what it was created not to do--increase emissions. It was more credible by using the European cap and trade as a template for what hypothetically will happen in the United States. I liked how you found the scientist who predicts the temperature will only decrease by 0.2% at best in 80 years. Maybe you could find the rate at which it has increased over the years to contrast to see if the 80-year sacrifice is really worth it.
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