Carbon trade, everybody wins

The government has been critised for their approach to climate change. For once I am not going to critise the government, because this time it appears that it is the committee that requires a beating with the cluestick.

The committee expressed "surprise" that the government intended to buy foreign carbon credits to meet 70% of its emission savings under the EU emissions trading scheme.

It says there should be an "absolute cap" on their use, saying: "The bill as currently drafted would still theoretically allow all the savings to be made externally to the UK, notably in developing countries, and thereby postponing the decarbonisation of the UK economy."

Errm, that is the point. The reason for the cardon trading scheme was to create the greatest benefit for people in future at the lowest cost to people now, by reducing carbon production where it was cheapest to do so. Enviromentalism should be about trying to do the best for people, not just an excuse for bansturbation by the political elites.

If it costs somebody £100 to reduce their carbon output by 1 ton and somebody else £70 to reduce their carbon output by 1 ton then by letting the first person pay the second person, say, £85 to reduce their output an extra ton so that they don't have to. In this example person 1 has saved £15, person 2 has made £15 and people in future still have the effects of climate change reduced by two tons of carbon, at $85 a ton according to the Stern Review. This means that between them all the world is better off by £30 (£85*2 - £70*2). If this trade had not been allowed the world would be no better off after the reductions in carbon than before (£85*2 - £100 - £70) so we might as well not have bothered.