The Wind does Not Blow This Way

Could our present course to create carbon caps and trade carbon credits actually make things much worse? An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal discussed how the caps work. Factories and electricity generators will be limited to current levels of carbon emission. To increase emissions they must buy emissions from another plant which has reduced theirs. Sounds like a recipe to ship the remaining manufacturing jobs over-seas. What about the credits from manufacturing jobs that recently exited the US? This law makes it illegal to bring jobs back to the US (and the carbon). So how much will this increase carbon emission? The standards and technology in the US for pollution control is much more stringent and efficient than in other countries. But it even gets worse. A main source of credits is China. They increase the pollution from the factory previously located in the US and then lower the pollution to a level still higher than the original pollution. They can then sell the carbon credits despite the fact they have added a net gain to carbon emissions. I guess this will work as long as the wind does not blow this way.