The Cap and Trade scheme is based on the rhetoric that we should ‘put a price on carbon’ and that governments do their duty of reducing the allotted permits given to industries towards a goal of reducing emissions to a theoretical sustainable limit of 350ppm. That polluters will innovate to reduce their emissions through a vast global trading scheme that allows polluters who cannot meet their caps purchase it through innovators and to pay off developing nations to ‘mitigate’ and ‘adapt’ to climate change.

It’s a scheme that, while making regulatory sense, is filled with loopholes that allows many industrials lobbyists and financiers to manoeuvre their existing corporations without vastly restructuring their business model. After all, paying off others is just another Business As Usual model.

The UN has the proposed CDM, while several other organizations have proposed various standards for carbon trading, such as the CER, VER, CCX, WWF gold standard. While the value of such markets can be an incentives for many companies to find ways to reduce carbon emissions and generate credits, and that developing nations may benefit,  there is little certainty that ‘polluter pays’ principles will be carry fully to the hilt of the law, especially among the most those with political clout. Meanwhile, all sorts of ponzi schemes will certainly pass through without being scrutinized, or slip by through creative technicality.

Far from the mere promise of acting diligently, let us recall the lack of action since the Kyoto Protocol and the current dithering at the COP15. we call on world leaders not only to act firmly upon the rule of environmental law, but also offer stronger incentives to spur genuine sustainable efforts.

Annie Leonard has managed to present the situation in an engaging manner, watch The Story of Cap N Trade

Today on RT news, from the University of Western Australia, Professor Cliff Olier of the School of Earth and Geographical sciences, represented a part of the scientific community that counters much of the ‘alarmists’ claims about climate change. In particular, rising sea levels due to ice cape and glacial melt. The professor has made himself known as an opposing voice against this theory since the 80s.

Then while it may be reportable news for us, spotting a 100 ice bergs near the waters of New Zealand and Australia may after all, not constitute as climate change related news, perhaps we are simply awed by mother nature cyclical work. If you’re driven by facts and like to challenge your opinions, perhaps you should pay heed to contradictory science made available at the COP15, the next 2 days (Dec 9, Dec 10th).

Personally, I wouldn’t debunk the accumulated facts or sentiments of the times. We do not need scientist further to explain to us the visible fact that man consumes and pollutes the environment all around him, that we’ve managed since the age of industralization to practically cover the globe, and we have always tightly contested for resources. That the formation of oil requires thousands of years and we go through that stuff at an irreplaceable rate. I could go on for many more examples of man ruining rather than respecting his environment, for me there is no doubt about the industrious amounts of CO2 we put into the atmosphere through decades of civilization, but whether man-made CO2 pumping the earth’s temperature up by 2C will cause a catastrophic change to the planet in the near future is a science you’ll have to weigh in.