Pollution Offsets / Carbon Credits?

My approach to Carbon/greenhouse/pollution offsets and trading rights boils down to this; Pollution, no matter the form or origination, unless naturally occurring-there were buffalo producing methane long before there were Indians to eat meat-has to be a zero sum process.

No process, manufacturing, farming, or resource extraction, should be licensed or allowed without a "zero sum" design included in it's process. That means end-to-end recycling of any waste products, offsets for the results of the products they manufacture and the job the products are designed to do, and zero contribution to air pollution. And by the way, the "tipping point" where the cost of recycling resources matches or is less than the cost of extracting them isn't far away.

The evolutionary process of pollution generation has to be separated from the process of civilization's contributions.

If we require anyone and everyone in the production and consumption chain to "zero out" their additions or subtractions from the zero state of only naturally occurring pollution, we will have stopped civilization's contribution to pollution in it's tracks (pun intended). The justification? We, the world's citizens, "own" the clean air, unpolluted waters we need to live. We give governments the right to manage these resources on our behalf. It seems only logical that requiring a Net Zero addition or subtraction to the world's resources in allowing civilization to exist is appropriate.

This means fishermen have to replace what they catch from the world's food stocks or only catch the increase from the baseline of sustainable fishery stocks; this means developed countries have to establish population control standards, and based on some research, this is possible. Developing and third/fourth world countries have to be encouraged to reach sustainable food production and standards of living before continuing population expansion.

At the current rate of world population growth, we are adding 15 cities the size of New York- 120,000,000 people- to the world each year. They have to be fed, housed, have schools, clothing, books, T.V.s, DVD players, Internet. They drive cars, and need jobs; they go to movies, skating rinks, and bullfights. They dance, play and use-air, food, water, energy.

It's taken the whole history of civilization to get to this point; a place where we are starting to recognize that a pollution-free world for our children and grandchildren may not be possible without some real effort on our part. A free marketplace, like America, is the right place to do this.

It's also the right time.