Climate Exchanges prove big

By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Los Angeles Times
The Chicago Climate Exchange is the first and only legally binding carbon emissions market in North America. In the absence of federal controls on greenhouse gas emissions, it applies an axiom of economic theory to the problem of global warming: People in search of profit can be expected to do just about anything for a buck -- even save the planet.

That concept of the market forms the cornerstone of regulatory efforts to fight global warming.
Interest in carbon trading as an arcane but powerful tool to fight global warming has intensified following the release last week of a landmark United Nations report that found rising temperatures will continue to increase even if greenhouse gas emissions can be held to current levels.

It’s a new form of environmental bookkeeping that theoretically reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases responsible for gradually rising global temperatures.
Since the exchange opened in 2003, almost two hundred companies -- including the Ford Motor Co., Du Pont, IBM Corp., Amtrak and American Electric Power Co. -- have volunteered to buy and sell the right to emit tons of carbon dioxide and five other key greenhouse gases.

California officials are beginning to frame market-based trading schemes, inspired in part by the Chicago Climate Exchange, to curb industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent over the next 14 years. State and federal regulators already use market trading to control the sulfur emissions responsible for acid rain.

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