Predicting the Climate-Changed City of the Future - NYTimes.com

In "Planned-opolis," by contrast, fossil fuels are too pricey to take for granted, so the government plans and computerizes its citizens' lives to make the city work. This allows many to work from home; others can call for a self-guided car that glides into a network of synchronized commutes.

Then there are two low-carbon scenarios, "Renewabad" and "Communi-city." In the first, megacities clean up by breaking free of national control and building dense development and public transit. In the second, power devolves even further: City centers disappear, and a person's entire life fits in a neighborhood. People build their own vehicles based on open-source technologies, such as electric cars, bikes and scooters. Some brew biofuel at home.

Chicago Climate Exchange Closes but Keeps Eye to the Future - NYTimes.com

Though celebrated by climate activists at its launch in 2003, CCX became plagued by a flood of credits from offset project generators that collapsed the CFI market, sending exchange prices to a nickel per unit. Highlighting this collapse, many in the U.S. carbon trading community openly questioned the legitimacy of the system itself, putting founder Richard Sandor and his team on the defensive at periodic carbon market conferences held in Washington, D.C., and New York.
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CFIs once traded as high as $7.50 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent emissions, but as of last Friday, the exchange trading price was just 5 cents, the same price they've been at for more than a year.

"Quite frankly, the market has pretty much collapsed," said James Hugh, who handles CCX transactions for the utility PSEG. "There really isn't all that much to do there."