First we have to understand the true purpose.
The purpose is to put some incentive on businesses by forcing a choice. They can invest in anti-pollution energy saving practices & methods or they can basically not do that and pay a penalty.
It's somewhat like CAFE standards on automobiles except with CAFE you have no choice. You must produce ONLY vehicles that get a certain mileage or above or you can't sell them at all.
Cap & Trade is a very complex issue that confuses a lot of people. The mindset behind it is that if we don't speed up our move toward more efficiency and less pollution we won't have the technology in place in time to operate transportation and businesses without things like oil, our electric grid will not be able to handle the load and the pollution problem will worsen to very extremely serious levels.
Energy & pollution are both things that there use & creation do not just effect the person using them or creating them.
Just some & not everyone conserving energy is like having gasoline rationing for most because it's in short supply while at the same time allowing some to use all they want.
And pollution is very similar to second hand cigarette smoke. If a company could pollute just on their premises and not effect others negatively that would be one thing. But it doesn't work that way. Pollution in the soil effects everyone's ground water the wind blows pollution everywhere and greenhouse gases effect everyone on the planet as well.
So he goal isn't for the government to make money on Cap & Trade... it's to help conserve energy and lessen pollution & greenhouse gases.
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