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Most serious carbon market proposals are not primarily related to removal/sequestration. They are related to reducing emissions. You get credits for emitting

• thinkcontext 7y ago
  Its not that they aren't primarily related to it, most proposals are neutral as to whether a ton of CO2 is avoided or sequestered. It just so happens to be the case that its relatively expensive to capture and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere compared to emissions avoidance. The lowest hanging fruit is efficiency (better insulation, more efficient appliances, cars, etc), followed by lower carbon forms of electricity, etc. We'll likely need to do sequestration but, assuming a gradually rising carbon price, it won't make economic sense to do it at scale until we've done the more cost effective things first.
  • jandrese 7y ago
    The nice thing about working markets is that it would naturally pressure people to do the cost effective stuff first. If buying carbon offsets is appropriately expensive you have a major incentive to avoid buying them.
• jandrese 7y ago
  That's just a tax with makeup. That's why they never work in the real world, and why they fall apart under any political pressure. The point of the market is that it provides political pressure from companies on both ends so it is insulated from political whims, at least to some degree. If some company wants to grease their local politicians to get exceptions or have the price set low they get pushback from other companies that want to redeem those credits at full price.