Ask anyone who actually listened in their science classes and they’ll tell you that carbon is responsible for all life on Earth. Ask anyone in government and they’ll tell you it’s a pollutant. Ask me and I’ll tell you that carbon and what we do with carbon are two different stories. The element carbon is found in all forms of known life. Carbon dioxide is naturally found on earth, but when we produce it in the amounts we do, it hurts the planet because it messes with the carbon cycle, which manages all our carbon. The carbon cycle fuels life and if we keep messing with it we won’t last long. That is why we are looking for a solution.

Cap and trade could serve as an effective system to reduce our emissions and save ourselves if it were actually working like it says it will. It will supposedly reduce the amount we “pollute” with carbon dioxide by 80% by 2050. Sounds amazing right? And the “Trade” part says that you can sell the permits for pollution the government gives you to other companies. You can get rich off being green. It’s sad that we only go with a solution that motivates us with money, and even sadder when we realize that because of that, it can be useless. There are many ways to cheat the system, and when motivated by money, people will do it.

The first is to sell false permits. Self-explanatory. The second is to cancel expansion plans. When you make your company bigger, you are allowed more permits, and when you make plans to expand, you are given more permits. You can then cancel your plans and keep the permits. There are many more tricks and while the businessmen are getting rich we’ll be wondering why we still can’t see the stars at night.

Our world is falling apart and we need a new solution. Cap and Trade can work with a few adjustments. We can tell all the big companies what to do or not to do and think, I can’t help much, I’m just one person. Well, you buy from those big companies and you decide what to do with their product. That is why it is up to you to decide the fate of our planet. Individually we can’t do much, that’s true, but when we do the same things together we become a force of nature. I know it sounds the most overused idea in these types of arguments, but it’s true. You start with yourself whenever you want change.