WHY DO ONLY CORPORATIONS GET CARBON CREDITS?

HANK CHAPOT, BERKELEY DAILY PLANET - Today's increasingly
internationalized carbon trading plans reward large corporate polluters
with "carbon credits" based on their historical pollution levels,
usually in tons, which they can then trade on the open market to other
corporate polluters. Trading pollution credits in a market-based system
includes the buying of so-called carbon sinks that are supposed to
"sequester" CO2 and supporting no-greenhouse gas energy production. In
the US, there is even an "acid rain" trading system for sulfur dioxide
emissions.

Unfortunately, this plan financially compensates heavy polluters and
only redistributes pollution by giving them credit for polluting in the
first place.

Every American, as citizens of the country that spews more than a third
the world's pollution, is more or less responsible for a portion of the
pollution our country produces. So, if we think about pollution trading
in a more democratic way, why can't each and every American, from the
president on down to the newborn infant, be given a piece of the
pollution market, just like the polluting corporations? We could each
take responsibility for our own environmental footprint. By choice or by
necessity we would be rewarded for living a low energy lifestyle.

I walk a lot and ride a bike to work. I haven't owned a car in three
years and haven't flown in five. I eat low on the food chain and try to
avoid products that add to air pollution. I took Al Gore's test on my
yearly CO2 production. The average in the USA is 15,000 pounds. Mine is
far below average at about 2,100. In a personalized carbon trading
scheme, I would be a rich man. I could sell my credits to my neighbor
who drives an SUV and owns a speedboat. But we'd both be rich if we
could barter our credits to industry. . .

Reuters reported in July that there are already proposals in the United
Kingdom to do just that. Environment minister David Milband is studying
the possibility of issuing consumers a personal energy use card
representing a citizen's portion of the entire pollution output of the
UK. The card would be used as a debit card that track's personal energy
use. Use more, you would have to spend you carbon credits and perhaps
buy more. Consume less and you could sell or bank your carbon credits,
maybe even draw interest. You could trade your credits to a person who
wants to travel on energy intensive modes of transport, eat meat, burn
gas and oil and dry clothes in a clothes dryer instead of on a
clothesline. And you would get healthier and slimmer for all the
walking.

Another plan, similar but less personalized, would be to increase taxes,
across the board or selectively based on social needs, on polluting
activities while reducing taxes on non-polluting activities and things
we want to support, like employment. This is called "true-cost pricing"
but it only works if you earmark the funds for reinvestment into
alternative energy projects. True-cost pricing would go a long way to
rationalizing our insane energy economy where nobody, the corporation or
the consumer, pays the costs of our American lifestyle. And for the
free-marketeers, true-cost pricing can be seen as another market-force
that will drive innovation and improve efficiency.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=09-01-06&storyID=24990