Cash for Carbon

Can clean money be exchanged for dirty air? That's the premise of an emerging trade in carbon credits, which hold out the tantalizing promise of allowing industries to insulate themselves from greenhouse gas regulations by voluntarily agreeing to pay for "global cooling."

Emissions trading, the selling of federally recognized "right to pollute" credits from one industry to another, is well-established. But a specific market for carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction is a product of the 1998 Kyoto Accords on global warming, which call for reducing worldwide CO2 emissions to below 1990 levels. 

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