> since he sold off his pollution credits, his solar purchase has authorized someone else to pollute for him. Netting us nothing in the end.
You're forgetting the 'cap' part of cap-and-trade. The point is minimize the cost of reducing the total amount of greenhouse gas (or whatever) pollution across society. The reason for allowing people to sell their credits is that it reduces the economic cost of reducing pollution. It doesn't matter whether any given individual is polluting more or less, what matters is that total pollution is continually decreasing until we reach safe levels.
Thanks for the explanation. You're right. I wasn't aware of the full system. The parts I did know seemed like a shady loophole for bigger polluters to take advantage of.
You're forgetting the 'cap' part of cap-and-trade. The point is minimize the cost of reducing the total amount of greenhouse gas (or whatever) pollution across society. The reason for allowing people to sell their credits is that it reduces the economic cost of reducing pollution. It doesn't matter whether any given individual is polluting more or less, what matters is that total pollution is continually decreasing until we reach safe levels.