Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate.

Consider the perverse effect cap and trade has on altruistic actions. Say you decide to buy a small, high-efficiency car. That reduces your emissions, but not your country's. Instead it allows somebody else to buy a bigger S.U.V. - because the total emissions are set by the cap.

I know what I have given you...
I do not know what you have received.

Its apparently individuals selling or trading the cards,

The marginal people on the trading desks, there's no skill set. If they don't trade derivatives, I don't know what they can do. The next stop is driving a cab.

The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city ... Gas-filled, noisy and hazardous, our streets have become the most inhumane landscape in the world.