Obama climate plan stirs cap and trade from deep sleep

Aug 3 Dreams that a cap-and-trade market could become a force for lowering carbon emissions died in the U.S. Senate in 2010, scuttled by politics and a bad economy.

On Monday, cap and trade was revived by the president, acting alone.

President Barack Obama's climate plan embraces cap-and-trade markets as a way to cut power plant emissions blamed for warming the planet.

It rewards 11 states in the U.S. Northeast and California that already have carbon markets by giving them credit for their early actions.

And the plan could incentivize more states, including some in the heavily coal-reliant Midwest, to eventually join in.

"To understate it, there has been a reticence to discuss cap and trade policies in the United States," since 2010, said Tom Lawler, the Washington, D.C. representative for the International Emissions Trading Association, a nonprofit group. "Maybe it was dead, maybe it was dormant, but now it looks like the option of choice." (by TIMOTHY GARDNER, Rueters)

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