From Simon Reynolds
Michael Le Page, in his open letter to Barack Obama (6 December 2008, p 20), would have done better to build on his excellent critique of the Kyoto protocol’s bureaucracy and “leakage” problems.
Part of the difficulty with Kyoto is that carbon caps are applied at the point of emission to the atmosphere. The alternative of capping the extraction of carbon from the geosphere would necessitate far fewer control points. Of course there would be objections. OPEC countries would have to measure oil production accurately, and some oil states may not be keen on revealing their true sales totals.
I would be interested to see some debate here on the relative merits of emissions caps and caps on carbon mining.
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, UK
