If the federal bailout money doesn?t work, the cap-and-trade scheme touted by the Obama administration and key congressional leaders might do the trick:
A federal plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and sell the rights to emit them probably won’t kick in for a few years. But while U.S. policymakers continue to squabble over the details of the “cap-and-trade” proposal, big banks are gearing up for what they see as a new profit center. “U.S. carbon trading is coming,” says Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays’ (BCS) investment bank. “You have to be in it to win it.”
It?s too bad cap and trade would prove far too costly to justify the virtually non-existent benefits its supporters tout for the environment.
