"Just like the market in sulphur emissions that GHW Bush helped create back in the day, that took acid rain from a big problem to a minor one."
Did it really, now? Or was it the cheap (yeah, all those corpses were cheap next to $2.00/gal gas) oil? Or did it happen at all? The reduction to a minor problem, that is. In realilty, not politically. I wouldn't mind seeing some figures.
However, for the sake of argument, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Notice however, that we are no closer to production fusion reactors or even fast-breeder fission to charge up all those "green" electric and "non-polluting" hydrogen cars with.
So how about we have a market on radionuclide emssions from coal-fired or even oil-burning power plants? Yeah, I can't see any politicians touching that one with a ten foot pole, either. But yes, logically, while you are correct in theory, at least in the limited context of reducing any given pollutant, you are overlooking 1) avarice and greed mixed with politics stacking the deck, as happened with the prototypical marketization of externalities, wetlands mitigation, and 2) the fact that this whole approach is a bandaid solution to begin with, rife with unintended and unwelcome consequences, not the least of which is further erosion of seemingly unrelated freedoms, economic repression, and stfling of true innovation. It's squeezing the little guy completely out of the picture. And you ignore him at your peril.
You really want to end pollution and environmental disaster, get Congress to stop creating and subsidizing monopolies with measures such as this. Slash spending and entitlements. There is no more money anyway. Repudiate debts, or they will be repudiated for you. Abolish the Fed, repeal the income tax and a bunch of others, and hang the bankers and insurance companies, or at least stop using the U.S. taxpayer as a neverending sink for their obligations, which they weasel out of anyway. Let *real" markets work. It's never really been tried before. The "Robber Baron" era, often cited as unbridled capitalism, was not free markets by any means, and could not have happened without corrupt legislatures waiving liabilities, lavishing grants and subsidies to privilieged elites to start with.. But I digress.
I'm not holding my breath, of course, but don't delude yourself either that cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, etc. will do a damned thing about climate change, except determine who gets air-conditioning and who gets to sweat to pay for it.
I'm sorry. I'm just not in a very optimistc mood today.