A carbon tax would have similar incentives. Green producers and products get taxed less than brown producers. It also doesn’t matter if the product comes from Timbuktu or Savannah, it just matters how green or not green it is.

Carbon trading would result in billionaires and large funds finding a new way to make more money at the expense of everyone else and solve little.

It is not genius. It creates a new financial instrument for the mega banks to extract yet another rent from.

A tax at CO2 origination is simpler, less opportunity to game, and more effective.

Carbon trading is a huge subside to the current polluters at the expensive of future polluters, indifferent to future polluters polluting more or less than current ones.

It is a great way to destroy a market (and a very important one), creating monopolies everywhere.

> Assuming you can track CO2 emissions

Also assuming that you meaningfully enforce violations. Although this is also a problem for a tax.