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Devils one and two, cap and giveaway and offsetting, make the system unfair and ineffective. But the last devil which I called distraction makes it downright dangerous.

You see there are real solutions out there, but cap and trade with its loopholes and promises of riches have made many people forget all about them. We’re not even close to a global agreement on a carbon cap to begin with. And duh, that is the whole point of cap and trade. But instead of hammering out a fair and strong deal, we are putting the cart before the horse and rushing off to trade schemes and offsets.

With all the bogus offset projects, huge giveaways to polluters and the failure to address injustices of climate change, do you think the Third World will get on board with the global cap? I doubt it. If a cap and trade proposal is stopping us from actually capping carbon, it’s a dangerous distraction.

We don’t need to let these guys design the solution. We, us, our governments, we can make laws and do it ourselves. In my country we already have a law, the Clean Air Act that confirms carbon is a pollutant which our environmental agency is allowed to cap. So, what are we waiting for? Go, EPA, go, cap that carbon! Instead, a US cap and trade law proposed in 2009 guts the Clean Air Act, leaving it to the market to fix the problem. If a cap and trade proposal weakens our ability to make strong laws, it’s a distraction.

Concerned citizens around world need to speak out and demand that we redesign our economies away from fossil fuels. The cap and trade makes citizen think everything will be ok if we just drive a little less, change our light bulbs and let these guys do the rest. If cap and trade creates a false sense of progress, it’s a dangerous distraction.

These cap and trade proposals are mostly about protecting business as usual. Right now, the US subsidizes fossil fuels at more than twice the rate of renewables. What? We shouldn’t be subsidizing fossil fuels at all. These guys don’t seem to realize the simplest way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere is to leave it safely in the ground.

US congressman Rick Boucher, a well-known friend of the coal industry, voted for cap and trade. He said it “strengthens the case for utilities to continue to use coal.”

No law that encourages coal use can stop climate change, period.

Solid caps, strong laws, citizen action and carbon fees to pay off ecological debt and create a clean energy economy, that’s how we can save our future.

And next time someone tells you the cap and trade is the best we’re gonna get, don’t believe them. Better yet, talk to them. They probably want a future safe from climate change too. Maybe they’ve just forgotten you can only compromise to a point before a solution isn’t really a solution.

Look, I know we’d love to sacrifice nothing, save the planet and get rich doing it. But get real. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. We can’t solve it with the mindset, their mindset, that got us into this mess. We need something new. It won’t be easy, but it’s time we dream bigger. It’s time to design a climate solution that will really work.