Evolution cannot survive on carbon alone, of course. In addition to trading greenhouse gases, Evolution helps broker deals for biofuels, natural gas, the uranium fuel for nuclear reactors, renewable energy credits, air pollution permits for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, even insurance against bad weather. But it is coal that has kept the lights on for the last 10 years. Whether it's physical shipments of the fossil fuel or the buying and selling of the permits for the pollution that burning it causes—Evolution's first trade was a sulfur dioxide allowance between Enron and Dynegy in February of 2000—the brokerage makes its living on coal.

Of course, coal is also responsible for nearly 30 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, and 20 percent globally. Efforts to halt the global warming caused by carbon dioxide have focused on trading metric tons of the odorless, colorless greenhouse gas globally since at least the 1990s. Evolution has specialized in the nascent trade since 2001 and has posted some early successes, such as the first trade designed to ensure compliance with the emission cuts embedded in the Kyoto Protocol—a transfer of a reduction in emissions in Slovakia to help offset emissions in Japan.

It sees no reason to step back now.

"We were in this market from the very beginning, before it was even a market," Evolution's Ard said. Now "the carbon desk has enough volume coming through to sustain that business."

This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

5 Comments

1. 1. outsidethebox 06:07 PM 9/7/10

   If you don't accept that people living as they have to is not per se pollution then the whole lie kind of falls apart.

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2. 2. eco-steve 07:37 PM 9/7/10

   Carbon trading is just as unethical as was the market for indulgences which caused protestantism to occur, because carbon trading gives companies the right to pollute.
   The only reasonable incentive to clean up the atmosphere is Carbon Tax. This 'Polluter Payer' approach cleaned up many of Europes pollution problems, as the taxes were redistributed as grants for clean technology.
   
   

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3. 3. eco-steve 08:54 PM 9/8/10

   Just imagine your home with no flushing toilets and no garbage collection. Imagine also no sewerage treatment upstream of your water supply and your garbage being just dumped upstream in your local river. You would soon complain that your leaders were treating you as a third world inhabitant.
   Yet your leaders are behaving in the same way as third world politicians, by collecting no taxes to deal with pollution, meaning products are not being charged for at a price which is adequate for environmental hygiene.
   Yes people are wallowing in their own atmospheric filth through lack of political hygiene, and exploiting other countries ressources in an unsustainable way.
   The world needs new leaders, new politics and a new economic system to replace the present one which is slowly rotting away because of its failure to recognise the real problems the planet is facing.

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4. 4. vulcan1701 02:50 AM 9/9/10

   This is just an effort to profit in the environmental reform efforts. Carbon Credits (guilt tax) is a bucket of bull. Taxes are levied for one purpose: To raise funds. Not for political purposes, not for incentives, not for housebuilding, not for education incentives, etc.
   We need to look at revamping the whole tax code instead of how Wall Street can manage or benefit from the Global War on Climate Change.

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5. 5. delmaracer 02:17 PM 9/9/10

   I just don't understand that IF Global Warming is a settled science as proponents claim, WHY WOULD THEY TRADE POLLUTION FROM ONE COUNTRY TO ANOTHER. THAT DOES NOTHING TO REDUCE THE EFFECTS OF THE POLLUTION. Who is making money in this new "exchange?"

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