"Permits to pollute"

As evidence that the global warming/climate change movement is simply a method for moving wealth around, I offer up this news item from Australia.

AUSTRALIA'S emissions trading market has been unofficially born – and the all-important carbon price has started at $19 a tonne.

Energy giant AGL has sold banking giant Westpac 10,000 tonnes of "permits to pollute".

AGL released a statement saying the sale to Westpac would take effect in 2012, and would create liquidity in energy markets beyond 2010.

The official emissions trading scheme, which puts a cap and a price on greenhouse gas emissions to help ward off climate change, is due to start in 2010.

Omitted from the article, however, is any word of what consequences await companies which opt not to purchase "permits to pollute". Surely, such permits will eventually become compulsory, as the following paragraph suggests:

Dr Beck said most companies would wait to buy emissions permits, but some would pre-empt the scheme to minimise risk and establish prices.