Man, I love this! An environmental class bought up the rights to pollute the environment with 9 tons of sulfur and then renounced those rights; it's using capitalism to save the environment!

The EPA (those fine folks charged with keeping our environment as clean as possible) auction off the rights to pollute the environment; most of these are bought by power companies who need to emit greenhouse gases. Now, these allowances are actually sold publicly ... and anyone can buy them. So apparently this class (and others have done this before) buy up these allowances, basically denying anybody else the ability to pollute!

It's a grand idea... the article notes that what the class bought is probably not enough to affect the power companies, but imagine if tons of people started getting involved with this; if enough people could buy these allowances, it would constrict supply so that the price for the allowances would increase for the power companies; if the prices became too high, then the power companies might (in a really idealized world, I know) pursue alternative fuel sources. Of course, increasing that price would also increase the average cost of the homeowner's energy bill, but this would also help force people to quit wasting so much energy!

Using capitalism to save the environment, who would of thunk it?