Cap & Trade is a proposal that says that there will be a limit for pollution or carbon emissions. This limit is exponentially decreasing so that gradually companies and industries will have to become more “green” to stay below the carbon limit. Companies will have permits to pollute that if unused can be sold to other companies.

Even though Cap & Trade is a good concept for certain issues, it has many flaws. I think that capping the amount of carbon emission is necessary for reducing pollution in the United States. What I don’t agree with is the Trade part. I think that companies wouldn’t be allowed to sell or buy the permits they are given by the government. In fact, the less of these permits they use, the less carbon will be emitted. If these permits become easily available, companies won’t do any effort in lowering their carbon emission because they will know that when thy run out of permits, they’ll simply buy more.
The only part of “Trade” that masks this fact is that companies who want to sell their permits won’t use them. Even this is absurd because even if the company that was issued the permits doesn’t use them, another company will. Another BIG flaw with Cap & Trade are offsets. It makes absolutely no sense to reward companies for reducing their carbon emission by giving them more permits to pollute. This will just discourage rewarded companies from becoming more eco-friendly.

Another of numerous flaws in this bill is that for big companies, the permits are free. With the permits they could sell they would be gaining money out of selling pollution. Meanwhile, polluters will be getting richer and still there will be no solutions for pollution problems.

Some people disagree with capping carbon emissions. The only argument that these extremists have is that carbon is necessary for all life on Earth. These people clearly have a weak point. First of all, carbon is not the only gas causing pollution. Factories emit Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and the dangerous Carbon Monoxide. In the quantity in which they are being produced, they are very dangerous and must be capped before the damage is beyond repair. Some extremists like Kristie Pellier even say nonsense such as “the more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the faster plants will grow.”
Finally, I think that Cap & Trade should not be used as a system for reducing carbon emission and pollution in the United States but instead something else should be drafted so that only the cap part passed. Something that would actually help to solve our problem and at the same time help our planet.