Bradford Plumer makes a very good point.

While the free market evangelicals constantly say that deregulation is the heart and soul of innovation, this graph of patents for sulfur dioxide emissions:

The Government spent money on reducing sulfur dioxide emissions before 1963, but when they started regulating the actual emissions is when we saw the technology develop?

It’s information like this that leads me to be suspicious of “market driven” procedures. A cap and trade system is a carbon tax, it’s just that speculators, rather than the government get the money….Let’s get it for the tax payers instead.