I don't really get that cap-and-trade article:
All this only works as the carbon price lifts. As with 1924 Château Lafite or Damian Hirst's diamond skulls, scarcity and speculation create the value. If permits are cheap, and everyone has lots, the green incentive crashes into reverse. As recession slashes output, companies pile up permits they don't need and sell them on. The price falls, and anyone who wants to pollute can afford to do so. The result is a system that does nothing at all for climate change but a lot for the bottom lines of mega-polluters such as the steelmaker Corus: industrial assistance in camouflage.
How does it "crash into reverse"? As far as I can see, at the very worst, the obligation to procure permits is neutral, there's no way it can actually be an incentive to pollute (non-polluters can still buy up permits and not use them, right?). And the fact that permits become easier to acquire when the economy is slow (and harder when it's booming, right?) seems like a feature, not a bug. Whether the overall permit supply is too large or too small is a separate issue. Am I missing something?
Also, WTF are Republicans doing spreading FUD about the effectiveness of market solutions (to problems they don't even believe exist, so why should they care if a given solution is effective anyway?)