Clarify Issued I ve added a clarify tag to the word issued in the first paragraph this is easily the most confusing and non obvious aspects of carbon trading How does a government decide how many credits ought to be issued for free I assume to each entity before trading begins Indeed most questions about emissions trading boil down to this very question For example if an auction is used and the auction is efficient economics would predict that no trades would take place post auction the occurrence of such trades would imply that the auction had been improper making the whole concept of cap and trade actually mean cap via auction I don t mean any of this as criticism But as Wikipedia is an encyclopedia I think it s failing to fulfill it s job here by dodging the most policy critical aspect of the issue I think simply writing issue does the reader an injustice