Carbon Trading

Enthusiasm is spreading for cap and trade systems to regulate the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted to Earth's atmosphere. In 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set a limit on sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions from obvious point sources and allowed those who emit less than their quota to trade excess allowances. As a result, regional acid deposition was dramatically reduced. Can the world do the same for CO₂ ? Fundamental differences in the bio geochemistry of SO₂ and CO₂ suggest that establishing a comprehensive, market-based cap and trade system for CO₂ will be difficult. For SO₂, anthropocentric point sources (largely coal-fired power plants), which are relatively easy to control, dominate emissions to the atmosphere.

Natural' sources, such as volcanic emanations, are comparatively small, so reductions of the anthropocentric component can potentially have a great impact, and chemical reactions ensure a short lifetime of CO₂ in the atmosphere.CO₂ , in contrast, comes from many distributed sources, some sensitive to climate, others sensitive to human disturbance such as cutting forests. It is thus impossible to control all of the potential sources. combustion are one of the smaller components of the atmospheric flux of CO₂. which is dome• noted by exchange between forests and the oceans. During most of the past so,000 years, the uptake and loss of CO₂ from forests and the oceans must have been closely balanced, because atmospheric CO₂  showed' little variation until the start of the Industrial Revolution. CO, from coal, oil, and natural gas combustion now comics from many segments of society. including electric power generation, industry, home heating, and transportation. Unbalanced by equivalent anthropological sinks for carbon, fossil fuel emissions account for the vast majority of the rise of CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere. Caps on emissions, like those instituted for SO₂ ,will be difficult to institute if the burden of reducing CO₂  is to be borne equally by all emitters. Because land plants take up CO₂  in photo syn• thesis and store the carbon in biomass, forests and soils seem to be attractive venues to store CO₂ . Market•based schemes propose substantial payments and credits to those who achieve net carbon storage in forestry and agriculture, but these projected gains are often small and dispersed over large areas. Carbon Trading news in freshsciencenews
 We will need to net any such carbon uptake against what might have occurred without climate-policy intervention. Conversely, will Canada and Russia be billed for incremental CO₂  releases that stem from the warming of cold northern soils as a result of global warming from the use of fossil fuels worldwide? If credit is given to those who choose not to cut existing forests, the increasing total demand for forest products will shift deforestation to other areas.