{"id":18418,"date":"2016-03-02T20:51:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T01:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18418"},"modified":"2016-03-02T20:51:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T01:51:20","slug":"will-cap-and-trade-slow-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18418","title":{"rendered":"Will Cap-And-Trade Slow Climate Change?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2016\/03\/02\/will-cap-and-trade-slow-climate-change\" target=\"_blank\">Will Cap-And-Trade Slow Climate Change?<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-10359 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<header>\n<p class=\"submitted desktop-only\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/carbon-price.jpg?itok=wzyUg4rS\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"horizontal-social-bar horizontal-social-bar-top clearfix\">\n<div class=\"horizontal-share-left\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"horizontal-share-right\">\n<p>The principle that polluters should pay for the waste they create has led many experts to urge governments to put a price on carbon emissions. One method is the sometimes controversial cap-and-trade. Quebec, California and the European Union have already adopted cap-and-trade, and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/toronto\/ontario-cap-and-trade-1.3464507\" target=\"_blank\">Ontario will join Quebec and California\u2019s system<\/a>\u00a0in January 2017. But is it a good way to address climate\u00a0change?<\/p>\n<p>The program sets an overall limit \u2014 a cap \u2014 on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions a province can emit. It then tells polluters, such as heavy industry and electricity generators, how many tonnes of carbon each can release. For every tonne, polluters need a permit or \u201callowance.\u201d So, if a company\u2019s annual limit is 25,000 tonnes, it would require 25,000 allowances. If a company exceeds its limit, it can purchase additional allowances from another firm that, because of its greater efficiency, has more allowances than it needs. This is the \u201ctrade\u201d part of the\u00a0equation.<\/p>\n<p>Although an individual company can exceed its greenhouse gas limit by purchasing credits, the province as a whole can\u2019t. The overall limit is reduced every year, so if the law is followed, cap-and-trade guarantees annual emissions reductions. The declining cap is the system\u2019s great strength and the way it protects the\u00a0environment.<\/p>\n<p>How effective is it? Although the answer isn\u2019t straightforward, there\u2019s evidence cap-and-trade played a key role in reducing acid rain in the United States. The 1990 Clean Air Act allowed power plants to buy and sell the right to emit sulphur dioxide. Since then,\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span>\u00a0sulphur dioxide concentrations have gone\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www3.epa.gov\/airtrends\/sulfur.html\" target=\"_blank\">down by more than 75 per cent<\/a>. As Nobel Prize-winning\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/11\/magazine\/11Economy-t.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">economist Paul Krugman wrote<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>, \u201cAcid rain did not disappear as a problem, but it was significantly\u00a0mitigated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\"><\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Cap-And-Trade Slow Climate Change? The principle that polluters should pay for the waste they create has led many experts to urge governments to put a price on carbon emissions. One method is the sometimes controversial cap-and-trade. Quebec, California and the European Union have already adopted cap-and-trade, and\u00a0Ontario will join Quebec and California\u2019s system\u00a0in January [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,103,12724,113,141,1080,5317,284,1378,1379],"class_list":["post-18418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-california","tag-canada","tag-cap-and-trade","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-david-suzuki","tag-desmog-blog","tag-european-union","tag-ontario","tag-quebec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18419,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18418\/revisions\/18419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}