We all read in primary school that human beings inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. This is the most basic function of life, a pure and simple breathe in and breathe out mechanism that reminds us how elemental life really is. Well, you can say good bye to breathing free, since every carbon molecule now comes with a price tag! Unbelievable right? Yes its true! Good morning! Let me put some light on what I am speaking about. I am speaking about “Carbon Credit”. I will put some light on this term for those who are new to this term. Carbon Credit are the product of a bid to check thoughless CO2 emissions. One carbon credit is equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide or equivalent greenhouse gases(GHG). GHG are the bad gases that are overheating out planet, signifying that more the carbon dioxide emission you help to curb, the more credits you accrue in your account. The system could work well on a project to project basis for heavy industries. Let’s say you have a steel plant and help save a sizable amount of emissions on a particular project by deploying anti-emission technologies. This, of course, calls for a certain amount of investment in technology on your part, but you can make the investment pay for itself by earning carbon credits and using these in a later project, which may be of great scale and thus involve greater emissions. Today, you can even buy carbon credits from companies that deal exclusively in them! The genesis of Carbon Credit lies in a recommendation made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC). The next step was formalisationo of each country’s emission cap, with separate caps for developing and developed countries, through the Kyoto Protocol. Each country in turn established caps for its various commercial enterprises, maintaining an account for every one of them in a national registry. Although the system does sound ideal, you need only call to mind the huge fuss kicked up by the bloc of developing countries at the latest Copenhagen climate change summit to realise that something is not quite creditable about carbon credits. For starters, there is the issue of fair allocation of caps, with some countries claiming that the ceilings fixed for them are disproportioinate to the emissions they cause, there is also the fundamental question of unfairly reigning in a country’s industrial setup, even before it has come at par with the developed world in terms of efficiency and technology. As they say, there are no free lunches in this world.

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