The predominant school of thought postulates that greenhouse gases emitted by human and animal activities are warming the earth and causing changes in the global climate with increasingly severe human, economic and environmental impacts. A direct corollary of this belief is that, to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous proportions, the world needs to stop the growth in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 at the latest, and then reduce them sharply by at least half of 1990 levels by 2050, and more after that. Emissions trading systems are being used as cost-effective tools for cutting greenhouse gases. Such schemes directly affect mining, as well as some of its major customers in other energy-intensive industries such as steel, aluminium, cement, graphite, glass, alloys, petrochemicals, magnesia, lime and refractories. This article takes a look at the effects of such schemes in major countries around the world.
