I wonder...
How long will it be before a large enough market and high enough prices developes so that it becomes profitable to be willing to shut down a business so you can promise to cut carbon use and thus sell the carbon credits.
There are examples of other emission trading programs that could probably be researched to find an answer. Offsets for non-attainment areas (see Houston for example) can get pricey.
A better question is when will high enough prices develop so that it will be profitable to shut down a business, sell carbon credits for profit, and then re-open the business (under a different "name" ofcourse) in a country that could care less about CO2 emissions.
Not that I think that some nations that are excused from CO2 emission requirements under Kyoto, even if they are large producers of CO2, and projected to have CO2 emissions which exceed those from the U.S in the near future, would use their preffered status to benefit their economy at the expense of ours. They obviously understand that the U.N., the E.U., the NRDC, etc., know what is best and will voluntarily give up their developing prosperity for the common good of the world...
Aluminum companies in California have already shut down operations to resell electricity (for which they had locked-in contracts) when prices went sky-high a few years ago. In other words, California economics turned them from manufacturers into non-value-adding middlemen. To their credit, I don't think they laid off their workers; they just sent them home and kept paying them.