Earth Equity News

Impacts of Financial Collapse on Trading and Taxing Carbon. By Curt Barry, Carbon Control News, October 1, 2008, subscription. "A source with the Carbon Tax Center (CTC), which favors the implementation of a sweeping carbon tax to lower GHG emissions rather than a cap-and-trade program, says the unprecedented effects to major financial institutions may cripple the prospects for cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. 'The firms that would be managing and conducting the trading -- some of them have ceased to exist and are having to restructure,' the source says. 'More broadly, there's just obviously a virulent distrust of so-called market measures, or measures that inherently require the creation of new markets that will be managed and manipulated by insiders. So there is just a real hill to climb for cap-and-trade, as an institution, that can win public acceptance and command public trust.' Further, cap-and-trade programs may grow less attractive to federal policymakers as energy prices drop, the CTC source says. While a carbon tax would ensure a certain amount of money is collected by the government from year to year, a cap-and-trade program and its price on a ton of carbon emissions is a constant unknown, and will decrease as energy prices fall, the source says."