Global warming is the world¡¯s biggest market failure, so the solution might just be better trading.
On one side of the trade would be the companies clogging the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases; on the other countless projects to eliminate the problem by planting trees or building machines that capture carbon dioxide. Create a market that turns a ton of removed carbon into a commodity just like corn or copper, and money will flow from the emitters to the fixers.
That¡¯s the theory behind the new carbon-offset market being conceived by Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England, and Bill Winters, the chief executive of Standard Chartered PLC. The two financial veterans late last year set up a rule-making task force populated by hundreds of bankers, airline executives, sustainability experts, commodities traders, scientists and other business leaders.
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