NOT EMISSIONS TRADING
Humans are strange. Rather than simply making a change, they prefer to introduce a system that appears to force them to make the change. Rather than immediately take action to reduce the pollution associated with their activities for instance, companies prefer to setup a market in cleaning up.
Some claim that emissions trading — where companies for whom pollution reduction measures are cheaper do more than their required share of reducing, and then sell their excess reductions to companies who find pollution reduction more expensive — will make environmental performance improvement cheaper. This is mistaken, firstly, because it casts emission reduction as a cost, rather than an investment (in future sustainable business development) or saving (in current environmental impact repair costs). Secondly, this is only true if you ignore the big picture over the long term. In the end, it is going to cost (in current accounting terms) to make the required changes, no matter what market mechanisms have been used to shuffle the cost around over time. To claim otherwise is to perform the same mistake as occurs when it is believed that public events sponsored by private companies cost the tax-payer nothing; whilst they are not funded out of tax revenues, they are however funded out of profits made by individual companies charging tax-payers more for everyday products.
Since there can be in the end no overall financial difference between companies a) paying to make changes themselves, b) taxing pollution (and providing tax-breaks for pollution reduction), and c) establishing an emissions trading market, the only reason for the latter can be because certain influential companies stand to gain from the latter. Either those promoting emissions trading aim to delay closure of their operations by continuing to pollute for as long as possible, or they aim to use all the strategies of tax evasion to trade emission reduction credits around their operation in order to avoid ever making the required changes.
Sustainments are entrepreneurial ways of making the transition to new more sustainable businesses. They require real changes now, that cost, but which will always be worthwhile when the world moves to more sustainable ways of living and working, as it must.
