COMMENTARY FROM WSJ

HEAD: Your Carbon Ration Card

While American politicians mull a carbon cap-and-trade system for industry,
our British cousins are already contemplating the next step: personal CO2
rations.

A Parliamentary committee in May proposed giving all British adults "carbon
allowances" that they would be required to spend - along with, you know,
real money - when buying gasoline, airline tickets, electricity or natural
gas. Britons who wanted more credits than they were issued could try to buy
them - again, with real money - from those who hadn't spent their allotment.
All of this is supposed to give people a financial incentive to reduce
energy consumption and thus their carbon "footprint."

The Labour government, already in a precarious political state, isn't dumb
enough to support the rationing plan, which Environment Minister Hilary Benn
calls "ahead of its time." Instead, it favors a climate-change bill that
Parliament is on the verge of passing that would lay much of the necessary
groundwork. But eco-eager Britons don't have to wait for Westminster. A
private test program for personal cap-and-trade began recently with 1,000
volunteers keeping tabs of their gasoline use.

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