Mitigating the World

There are a few ways that we can start to mitigate the worlds carbon output.  Such ideas include cap and trade or a carbon tax.  Using a cap and trade program or a carbon tax in order to try and limit the amount of carbon pollution that is released into the atmosphere.  These two things are quite different from one another though.

A cap and trade program would be a system of tradeable emissions permits.  This would be a limited number of licenses that would allow businesses to pollute to a certain degree.  Each business would be given a certain number of licenses and in order to release more pollutants into the atmosphere they would have to purchase additional licenses from smaller businesses that don’t require their allotted amount.  This could lead to banking and borrowing.  Borrowing would have to do with the smaller businesses ‘selling’ their extra licenses.  Alternatively they could keep their extra licenses as a way to allow them to later emit more emissions as their company grows.

The other option that they are talking about is tan emissions tax or effluent fee.  With something like this people would be required to pay a sum that is proportional to the amount of pollution that is being released into the air, or likewise dumped into a river (Krugman, 2010).  With both of these options there is a chance that the amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere can be controlled, to a degree.  On one hand the cap and trade program, as long as a company is willing to pay, there may not be a reduction in the amount of emissions.  On the other hand an emissions tax would be for everyone, though it may be hard to regulate and accurately tax individuals for some things.

Krugman, Paul. "Climate Change - Building a Green Economy - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. The New York Times, 7 Apr. 2010. Web. 6 Apr. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html?pagewants=all&_r=0>.