Good old-fashioned rent-seeking

We don't begrudge anyone the opportunity to make a buck. But there's a difference between making money by producing things people want and making money by gaming the regulatory process. There's no market here unless the government creates one, and who has the profit opportunity depends entirely on who the government picks as the winners and the losers in designing this market in the first place. So it's no wonder that almost any business that has ever put an ounce of CO2 into the atmosphere is rushing to show its cap-and-trade bona fides.

...so far Europe's commitment to Kyoto has been more hot air than action.

The reason is hardly a secret, though you rarely see climate-change activists admitting it. Despite all the talk of "alternative" fuels, some 80% of the energy that the world produces today comes from carbon-based fuels. Barring cold fusion or some other miracle technology, that ratio won't change much for decades to come. That means, in turn, that any stringent CO2 cap would inevitably have serious economic costs. We doubt voters will elect politicians who tell them the cost of reducing their "carbon footprint" is more blackouts or a lower standard of living. And in any case China is putting up a new coal-fired plant every week, raising emissions that will overwhelm whatever reductions cap-and-trade would yield in the U.S.