14052010

Is Cap and Trade really the way to care for the planet?

Luckily it seems that Cap and Trade is looking to become itself extinct and with good reason. See here for more detail on why its such a bad idea..

So what do we do instead? Global warming is clearly a 'none event' in terms of what we can do to control how the atmosphere changes; so I would say rather than focusing on things we cannot change, instead focus on what we can and what is evidently win/win situations.

For instance:

• Research. Get out of finding ways to reduce carbon and instead focus on ways of making manufacturing processes more energy efficient and less polluting through the whole product life cycle.
• Incentives. Set up tax breaks for manufacturers who produce goods that will last longer than 10 years without failure.
• Reuse. Examine and set standards in markets that are currently fragmented through lack of standards - reward manufacturers who adopt standards that improve reuse.
• Energy consumption. Again reward manufacturers who produce newer generations of products that do the same function but with a lower energy usage footprint.
• Education: Actually spend time in schools educating people on how to live a more environmentally friendly life and 'dump' all the global warming/carbon trading rubbish.
• Technology: actively support technologies which reduce our usage of transport - for instance working at home.

Basically there are lots of things we could be doing that have a much more meaningful impact on how we preserve the environment and reduce the rate of consumption of resources. We need to be thinking a lot longer term on these issues.