I am really delighted that you have featured an article on carbon trading and its prospects for banks, especially in the midst of today’s financial turmoil.

However, it needs to be said that placing a value on greenhouse gas emissions is not restricted to just carbon trading. Other opportunities in the whole area of carbon finance will include originating of carbon assets, structuring innovative transactions, financing carbon reduction and clean energy projects, investing in the quoted and unquoted companies, and insuring in the low-carbon economy, which are just as important as carbon trading.

As such, I think that the prospects for banks and other financial players in the carbon finance and carbon markets field are underestimated in this article and should provide a criticial underpinning for prospects in years to come.

Why should banks enter into this market asset class? They should develop programs whereby the proceeds from carbon allowances go back to companies involved in energy alternatives, or programs to support further development of alternatives and grassroots programs for state and local communities in all aspects of the greening industry. Banks have already showed what they can do, and despite their mismanagement they continue to profit from consumers. Banks should be partners in this, not benefit from it.

Maybe the banks should set up programs that support and assist local, private, and state agencies that want to better their efforts in green alternative energies. I could use that sort of help right now to complete a small scale wind assessment for the potential development of small scale wind power.

“Capitalizing” and seeking “opportunity” in restoring the natural balance of energies humans have disturbed in nature is, in my opinion, a big mistake.

In the past we have linked natural resources (such as petroleum) to economic benefit and today the consequences are devastating, since fairness in prosperity is very skewed.

The reduction of carbon should not be based on economics. It should be done on a voluntary basis. The fundamentals of staking “human progress” in contrast to “natural balances” is contradictory—you say, for instance, that no one will shut polluting factories because we are dependent on them—so let us modulate by incentives in the hope that in the future it becomes a process. However, that model will continue to lead on the path of capitalizing situations, hedging risks, and opportunism, all of which are characteristic of this economic downturn.