>>12182590Are you referring to carbon credits?
There is nothing ridiculous in them, in fact economic solutions like that are the best way to get people to change their ways.
You set up the carbon limit you like which you can slowly decrease over time to achieve the levels that are sustainable again. Then you divide them between nations based on some metrics like population. Then you create an open market for them.
It has many upsides such as
1) A developing nation that is underusing their share can sell the excess and install clean power to develop their economy instead of using dirty power sources.
2) A developed nation that is over using their share can buy more licenses to pollute from said developing nations instead of having to simply close down industry and lose countless jobs.
You won't ever get developing nations to agree without the first and you won't ever get the developed nations to agree without the second, credit system is a win win for both. Without a system where both sides can agree nothing will change and things will get worse for both.
As an additional benefits
3) Industries that pollute more in relation to the value they create will be penalized while industries that create lot of value per unit of CO2 will benefit which drives competition
4) When there is a real cost for pollution there is incentive to innovate solutions that generate less of it.
Air is a resource that is seemingly freely used by industry but the clean up is left to the society. This is the way things like water were before and people pretty quickly realized that if a factory is able to poison the citys fresh water source without any cost they will absolutely do it and it's really retarded to allow them to do so. Putting a price on gasses is not only fair but it's simply sane.
Incentives are insanely important in economics. If polluting the air is free then who ever does it will always have a competitive edge over those who don't which means nothing will ever change.
