Capping the Carbon Market  Jim Hansen on Banks and Cap-and-Trade
The United Nations Climate Change Conference took place from
December 7-18, 2009, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Credit: United
Nations/COP15  Posted on January 12, 2010  James Hansen,
director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of
Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth
Institute, has spent the better part of his career trying to get
people and governments to recognize the consequences of climate
change. In an Op-Ed in the New York Times on 6 December, Jim
wrote about the danger of the climate talks taking place right
now in Copenhagen devolving into what he termed “cap and fade.”
In a related essay, published here, Jim wrote a more pointed,
acerbic piece about how cap-and-trade policy engenders a false
interpretation of what the emissions problem really is. He
writes:  “Cap-and-trade sets a nominal emissions cap by
auctioning permits to pollute. This