The European emissions trading system died at the hands of big business last week.

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President Obama, take note: if governments won't step up to the plate, a life-sustaining climate is unsalvageable.

This faith in the markets is misplaced: only governments can save our living planet

"In other ages, states sought to seize as much power as they could. Today, the self-hating state renounces its powers. Governments anathematise governance. They declare their role redundant and illegitimate. They launch furious assaults on their own branches, seeking wherever possible to lop them off.

This self-mutilation is a response to the fact that power has shifted. States now operate at the behest of others. Deregulation, privatisation, the shrinking of the scope, scale and spending of the state: these are now seen as the only legitimate policies. The corporations and billionaires to whom governments defer will have it no other way.

Just as taxation tends to redistribute wealth, regulation tends to redistribute power. A democratic state controls and contains powerful interests on behalf of the powerless. This is why billionaires and corporations hate regulation, and – through their newspapers, thinktanks and astroturf campaigns – mobilise people against it. State power is tyranny, state power is freedom."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/faith-markets-misplaced-governments-save-planet

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1. the market worked as intended

read the whole article

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2. As intended by whom?

"This is an example of what happens in a market-based system: any clash between generating profit and protecting the natural world is resolved in favour of business, often with the help of junk science."

If the intent was to protect the environment it was an abject failure.

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3. the market matches buyers with sellers

other issues ...
not the fault of 'the market'.

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4. In a free market, that's true.

The unregulated exchange where everyone has a fair shot, where buyers/sellers play by the rules, there's no predatory pricing and no monopolizing of resources.

Just one problem - it doesn't exist.

"If a market is to serve a wider social goal than simply maximising corporate profits it must operate within a tight regulatory framework. Pricing mechanisms do not magic away the need for regulation – if anything, they enhance it. To make them work, politicians still have to confront and overcome powerful interests. They still need to govern and decide. Yet everywhere markets are invoked as an alternative to dirigiste and decisive government."

[quadrature]

5. 'market' does not require 'free'

trading in gov't issued pollution allowances,
has nothing to do with 'free'.

that market still performs the useful
function of matching buyers with sellers

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6. That market has collapsed - it's no longer performing any function

and I'm completely missing your point.

?

[Nihil]

7. Ask not for whom ...

... the republican trolls, it trolls for thee ...