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The article offers information on the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) that was launched by the European Union (EU) in January 2005. It is reported that EU ETS is part of EU's effort to meet its Kyoto protocol of eight percent below 1990 levels by the reporting period. The EU ETS represents 80 percent of volumes by value traded in 2007 and dominates trading in the $62-billion global carbon market. The European Commission (EC) set compulsory caps on aggregate carbon dioxide emissions for the EU's 15 member countries in 2003. The cap-and-trade system is the combination of an absolute cap on emissions with the ability to trade allowances.

It is no surprise that the European Commission wants to tighten the regulation of European chemicals to promote cleaner living. But its current proposal is ambitious even by the European Union's (EU) own lofty environmental rhetoric, dwarfing anything dreamt up by the bossy bureaucrats of America's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The chemicals in question are not only the stuff of big, smelly factories, but those used in making everything from cosmetics to car parts. The aim is to subject all chemicals in use before 1981--and so not covered by current rules--to a tough safety-testing regime. Chemicals firms say they support the goal of REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) to update laws that have failed to rid Europe of the nastiest substances. REACH is largely the brainchild of Margot Wallstrom, the environment commissioner, who comes from Sweden, a country that has been leading the fight against chemicals.