What is a 'Carbon Credit'?

Answer 1

You'd think with all the environmentalist freaks on here SOMEONE would know....

It's a term from Kyoto - countries are allowed to emit a certain level of CO2 into the atmosphere. If Canada is allowed to emit X but instead burns Y, it will have to pay a fine - more or less - in the amount of the difference. It does so by buying "carbon credits" from countries such as China who are not bound by the same restriction.

The result? Canada burns the same amount, China burns the same amount, but Canada has to give China gobs of money.

Answer 2

I can understand why people may feel a little cynical about carbon credits. It is not a perfect solution but it is a beginning.

Countries which emit less carbon than their size and population would have us expect are able to sell spare capacity to countries which produce a lot of carbon. The idea is to make the total amount of carbon emitted go down in line with the Kyoto Agreement targets.

The EU has the makings of a workable scheme in which individual companies will be able to trade carbon credits, too.

Developing nations are exempt for a few years to give their economies time to adjust to the process.

Developed nations do have an advantage in that their technologies are more developed and therefore cleaner. They also have more money to buy credits from poorer, less polluting countries.

The system is already having some beneficial effects amongst those countries which have signed up to the Kyoto Agreement.

The aim is to get convergence between the developed and developing nations eventually, so that everyone benefits.

If the US, Australia and Canada would all sign up it would help!
(If I remember rightly, none of them have so far, claiming that it would hurt their industies too much.)

Answer 3

it is a dumb thing.. basically it says we know that humans will dump 6 billion tons of co2 into the air every year.. which is nothing. to other natural dumpings.. anyway.. the plan was to limit all countries x amount the number would be different for each nation which would = 6 billion tons a year..
and if your nation didnt use the set amount it had a credit for the total... example.. the UN gives you 5 million tons.. you use 3 million tons.. so you have a surplus of 2 million tons in which you can save.. or sell to some other nation... the dump part of the treat was it gave nations that produce no or almost no co2 alot of credit and gave developed nations less than half what the produced.. it was basically a way to blackmail developing nations so poorer nations could have even more more.. a tax on people that work if you will