User:Mikeakers09/The Story of Cap and Trade

Annie Leonard’s, The Story of Cap and Trade, is an animated video that explains Leonard’s concerns about how Cap and Trade plans to lower carbon emissions. In the video Leonard raises questions about who is designing the plan, the idea of giving away free carbon emission permits, and how offsetting can lead to problems. Leonard supports the plan’s idea to put a limit on the amount of carbon that can be released into our atmosphere, but sees some major problems in the details of the plan.

One of the first points she tries to make is about who is actually designing the Cap and Trade plan. She states that brains behind Cap and Trade are Wall Street businessmen that specialize in building new markets. She brings up that Enron advocated for Congress and the Clinton Administration to pass a carbon emissions trading policy in 1993. In 2009 Goldman Sachs, the company largely responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis, stepped up its funning to try to get lobbyists to pass Cap and Trade legislation. Leonard is worried that the designers of cap and trade are looking profit from a market bubble rather than really solving the problem of carbon emissions.

Another aspect of cap and trade that is unsettling to Annie Leonard is that Cap and Trade would give out carbon emission permits for free. She mentions that this aspect of Cap and trade is what leads many people to nickname it “Cap and Giveaway”. She opposes this approach because the biggest current polluters would receive the most permits to emit carbon. She views this as an unjust reward for companies who were polluting in the first place. Annie would rather see carbon emission permits be sold. She gives a few examples of how the money could be used. It could be invested into innovating new forms of clean energy. The money could also be used to pay citizens a dividend to compensate for the higher costs that would be incurred while transitioning our economy to prefer clean energy. Another option would be to use the money to pay those who are most harmed by climate change. Lenard and many others call the later option, “paying back are ecological debt”.

Leonard also sees a problem in companies being able to offset their carbon emissions. Offset permits would be granted when a company removes or reduces carbon emissions. The offset permits would allow companies to emit more carbon, or they could sell the permit to another company. Leonard understands the intentions of the idea, but thinks that it would be too hard to tell if real carbon is actually being removed. She believes that offsetting is the easiest part of the system to cheat.

The final point that Annie Leonard makes is that she sees Cap and Trade as a distraction from the real solutions to global climate change. She points out that we are nowhere near agreeing on a global cap or limit of carbon emissions. Without an agreement on a limit of carbon emissions, Leonard makes it clear that Cap and Trade cannot happen. She argues that it is a distraction from the real issues facing global climate change and that Cap and Trade is giving people a false sense of progress.