When logic says one thing but it just doesn't feel right - Carbon credits

Had a reason recently to once again review all "Things Emission" (carbon emissions) and because it was as uncomfortable as always, I tried to figure out why is it that we are unable to ever really feel that we "understand" the whole issue of carbon credits, cap and trade and all that.

My conclusion is that the fundamental difficulty is that our mind and our sense of what is right (morality of sorts) are pulling in opposite directions.

While it is not difficult to understand and accept the logic that the world collectively will reduce overall emissions the most if it reduces the emissions of the biggest polluters first, the inescapable fact is that this just feels "wrong".

It feels as wrong as it would feel to pay potential robbers to not rob us or to pay potential rapists not to rape. Some of the arguments are similar such as that the potential robbers are just poor and if they were less poor they would not be motivated to rob.

Indonesia, China or Russia would like to be able to build power plants that pollute less but those cost a lot more so they "can't help it" and all other things being equal (the rest of the world not paying them to pollute less), they will provide electricity for their people the least expensive way they can.

So they are issued emissions credits, in order to benefit from them there needs to be a market for those and there is trading of carbon credits and once that is there, you can `cap`emissions of various businesses and tell them that in order to pollute (produce) more, they have to buy some emission credits.

Not sure I am any further along after realizing what my mental block was.