Making money from pollution

Following the 1997 Kyoto agreement, carbon trading - where firms trade and exchange pollution allowances - is on the rise. This will create investment opportunities.

Following the 1997 Kyoto agreement, carbon trading - where firms trade and exchange pollution allowances - is on the rise. This will create investment opportunities, says Simon Wilson

Why are carbon emissions bad?Gas emissions containing carbon - such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane - are produced by industrial processes, such as burning fossil fuels. As the world becomes more industrialised, the build-up of these gases traps heat in the earth's atmosphere, much the same way as heat is trapped in a greenhouse. That build-up is blamed by some scientists for the present rise in the world's temperature and the accompanying increase in extreme weather conditions, such as storms, floods and droughts. Unless the trend is stopped and reversed, many scientists and governments believe climate change could have catastrophic consequences.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.