Reply #3: The basic idea is this: [View All]

[phantom power]

The world (or a country) sets up some kind of limits to the amount of CO2 each business can produce. Now, suppose you are a business who produces less CO2 than you are allowed. Then you have "carbon credits." You can sell those credits to a business who is producing more CO2 than their limit.

So, you have a "carbon trading" market.

It sounds plausible, until you start wondering who's going to set these limits, who is going to enforce them, and who is going to audit all of the CO2 accounting that is required to make this system work. We can't even agree on what the "embodied carbon" of most products or services is. It's not really an easy question to answer, although it sounds straightforward in theory.