The story of Cap & Trade
Desmond Yiu z3255638
Reflection
The story of cap and trade is about how the world tried to deal with fossil fuel abuse and carbon emissions. Currently nearly everything we use consumes fossil fuels. Be it the cars we drive or the phone in our pockets. They all use fossil fuels to run or to be manufactured. As you know carbon emissions are a leading cause of global warming and so the world got together at the Copenhagen meeting to find a solution. The solution they chose was Cap and Trade.
Cap and Trade is a process where governments set a yearly cap on carbon emissions. They then sell permits to pollute to companies. Each year these permits are less and so the value on them increase and in theory the pollution decreases. However this has lead to a market where only money making is the goal. Companies are selling and trading these permits to make profits. There is also the issue with carbon offsetting where a company will claim they have decreased their emissions and get payment for this progress. However many companies have cheated their way into free money by not actually decreasing their carbon output.
“We should be paying our ecological debt”
This quote really hit me. I never really thought of it as a debt and it made me realise that yes, we do need to treat it as one to take climate change seriously. Without us taking it seriously nothing will change.
“Nine out of Ten African farmers will lose their ability to grow food”
This really touched me to. At the expense of others first would countries benefit. This is really unfair! We could potentially be digging the graves of millions of people.
“Solid caps, Strong Laws, Citizen Action, Carbon Fee’s”
The solutions suggested seemed realistic. I have wondered why people have not listened to these people when they were looking for a solution to global warming. Instead they turned to business people. Business people only see money!
The design community should promote alternatives to product materials and focus on real world solutions for global warming as it is a real and very dangerous issue. Awareness of the issue is critical and designers should alert others of this great danger.
In conclusion, a nice short video, something we should all reflect on.
