Is cap-and-trade a political excuse for carbon emission?

Although cap-and-trade policy is largely endorsed by economists for its efficiency and cost-effectively, some environmentalists are not satisfied by this approach. The trading of permits, some argue, are like indulgences in the middle age, providing excuses for developed countries to not control their emission by simply paying more to developing nations. Here is a video of Dr. James Hansen, a NASA scientist specializing in climate change:



Economic interests and environmental protection always seem to be the mortal enemies of each other. The reason for the conflict root in the large use of fossil fuels. Those easy-to-extract and high efficiency energy sources contribute enormously to the development of economies, as well as the improvement of life qualities. At the same time, the huge amount of carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels, according to many environmentalists, create a horrific change in greenhouse gas quantity in the atmosphere, which had changed and will continue to change the global temperature and eventually the environment.

Environmentalists advocate for radical changes, for example, replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. However, those changes are normally extremely expensive. LADWP ( Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) 's plan of replacing half of their energy sources with clean energy has costed the agency over a million dollars.

Given the loss in wealth, governments are inclined to choose mild ways such as cap-and-trade to protect business interests along with satisfying the public need for environmental protection. Countries responded actively to carbon trade are those that generally considered the immediate victims of climate change. Australia, for example, would suffer the most from the melting ice from the Antarctica. The European Union, located at high latitudes could be easily affected by climate change.


Aside from all the arguments on politicians' choices and economic interests, there are still debates about the cause of climate change. Here is a blog by Tom Moriarty, a Senior Scientist at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory: ClimateSanity.

It is clear that human contribution to greenhouse gas accelerates the change of temperature rise and the process of climate change. What is unclear is that are there anything we can do that can actually change the situation. As scientists have proved, the Earth has its own cycle of global temperature alterations, are human beings powerful enough to halt the natural cycle? 

In David Letterman's word, are we close to doomed or are we doomed already?