Emissions for sale in the North Country. For $25, you can purchase three tons of carbon dioxide emissions. It's a way for the public to get involved and help the Adirondack Council reduce CO2 pollution from regional power plants. Our Sarah Hagen has more on how big of an impact this local initiative can actually have on climate change.

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Clarkson University Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science Director Philip Hopke said, "In general, it has been more cost-effective to try and keep old plants up and running, than it is to build newer, cleaner-burning, lower-polluting plants."

But today there is a regional limit on CO2 emissions as part of an initiative to reduce the environmental damage from power plant pollutants.

Adirondack Council Communications Director John Sheehan said, "Power companies essentially go to their computers and try to purchase enough carbon credits to cover the emissions they are going to put out of their smoke stack that year."

While power plants bid for their emission allowances this week, local environmental groups, such as the Adirondack Council, were also getting in on the action.

"The more that we take off the market, the fewer of those allowances there are left, the higher the price is going to go and there is less carbon that can be emitted from a power plant smokestack," said Sheehan.

Other environmentalistd believe such regional initiatives are honorable, but are not likely to make a significant impact on climate change.

"This kind of small scale local initiative is not going to get us very far towards the solutions that we need and at the scale we need to make," said Hopke.

Professor Hopke says regulating one region just shifts the pollutants to other power plants in other parts of the country.

Both environmentalists agree that a global carbon reduction program is the only way to truly get climate change under control.

To learn more about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or the Adirondack Council's initiative to purchase emissions visit www.adirondackcouncil.org/climatechange3.html.