I don't see why all this moral outrage about carbon permits and all their government control isn't also directed at similar things like fishing permits (as poor a job as they are doing).
Short answer: people don't want to change.
There's too much at stake here: peoples' unsustainable lifestyles and quaternary economy are at complete odds with climate change, which requires long-term planning and forcefully moving away from stuff like coal, vast gasoline consumption and "every day's a beef day".
Markets do not like to move to more expensive means of production to produce same commodities as their competitors do at half the price. There is significant inertia to this change, and it is slow. This is detrimental if society's goal is to transform into something else and on a fast pace too! As such, governing bodies dictate - as their right is - what the markets should do. The markets resist. A crisis is born. No matter what the deal is, they resist. Such is their mission as completely amoral profit machines. An insignificant number of them will probably profit immensely from the paradigm shift, but those who are large now will probably suffer.
People are quite conservative as well. The modern western lifestyle is pure rubbish, literally: our entire economy revolves around people buying, buying and buying stuff, casting away 3 year old iPods, two year old cars, yesterday's food, all wrapped in several layers of plastic. The legacy of our great free market experiment can be seen in landfills. The goals of all these policy changes are to reduce carbon emissions and not surprisingly peoples' behaviour is also a target. Most people don't like this at all. The idea that your very actions can actually have some meaning in either good or bad has negative implications for people who have been all about rampant individualism. And the idea that world might became a pretty ****ed-up place during our lifetime because of what we have been doing is very unpleasant. Everyone would just love to see that the worst-case scenarios won't happen, and everyone would be really, really happy if it wasn't us or if nothing will happen. The inertia is subconscious.
And about the rage against fishing quotas?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33553385/ns/us_news-environment/"They have been devastated and dwindled and in many places there are no more fish left, but goddamnit MY PROFITS!" Tragedy of the commons indeed. I have a nagging suspicion that this is what is happening on a larger scale with all this heavy industry stubbornly resisting any kind of change to more sustainable lifestyle.
