However, the effect would have been lasting if the market had been well-designed. The obvious mistake is that (like so many mechanisms in our collapsing economies) it was predicated on continuous economic growth (real growth, in energy consumption in particular : not just nominal growth). That would have been easy to get right : quotas could have been indexed to some measure of overall energy consumption in the EU.

In practice, the fixing of the system is being blocked by the most energy-hungry members, led by Poland. This is understandable. If EU carbon reduction policy had been based on a carbon tax, for example, instead of quotas (which would have been preferable, to my mind), this opposition would still exist, and would probably have led to a lowering or abolition of the carbon tax.

The simple fact is that the environment comes last. Costly measures are seen as luxuries when other economic problems seem more pressing. Had the EU carbon market never existed, Böhm might well now be writing about the failure of carbon taxes.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}