Paying for the privelege to pollute

I don't know how much press it's getting elsewhere in the country, but here in New York City, our Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been trying to push an agenda through the state assembly to levy a toll against traffic that wants to enter the congested midtown and downtown areas of Manhattan. This will, says Bloomberg, make it a more liveable, pleasant city, with less pollution and more available dollars to fund public transit. Normally, I'm all for any measure to promote public transit, but something about this program doesn't seem quite right. It reminds me, in some ways, of the trade of "emission reduction credits," known to many people as "pollution rights." Under this system, which was written into the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1990, each corporation (or country) is given a certain number of "pollution credits," which represent a certain amount of specific pollution a company (or country) can dispense in a given year. If said company (or country) doesn't use all of its credits, they are allowed to sell the unused quantity to another corporation (or company) that needs to belch out a few thousand more cubic feet of sulfur dioxide.
A great plan, except that it doesn't really reduce polluting emissions any more than it ensures that emissions will remain at a set level. And I suppose that beats letting companies pollute the environment completely unfettered, but what doesn't seem fair to me is that these entities can essentially pay to pollute. How can we stop these multi-billionaire oil and chemical companies from doing whatever they want in regards to harmful emissions? And how does money solve the problem of greenhouse gases and global warming, anyway? Besides lining the pockets of federal workers to pay for air conditioners, I mean.
Because global warming and pollution is not really a money issue, it's a health issue. Though here in the U.S., we are used to throwing money away on pills and surgeries and medical techniques in pursuit of perfect health, we can't rightly give the stratosphere a facelift. We could have the richest government in world, sitting atop a pile of money supplied by pollution rights, balanced precariously atop the highest peak of the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by water. This is the kind of issue you can't temper until it goes away, you need to put your foot down and say, "I would rather have clean water to drink than Saran Wrap." We'll chastise a lone shooter at Virginia Tech for being a nihilistic mass-murderer, but we don't bat an eyelid when Dow makes decisions that adversely affect the health of tens of thousands of people all the time. If corporations are entities that are more like people than companies, than ExxonMobil should be locked away from society without parole.
And that's how I see this toll to drive into Manhattan island; a bold, financial measure that doesn't address the real problem at all. Sure, it will keep the average idiot from tooling around on fifth avenue in the middle of the day, but how can it stem the tide of rich Escalade owners and diesel-belching delivery trucks that can afford nearly any cost to do their business? It reminds me of Bloomberg's tactic on cigarette smoking: banned indoors, taxed to high heaven, but having relatively little effect on the actual number of smokers in the city. And where is that tax money now? Funding some commercials and the nicotine patch program, presumably, though I have never seen the books on that. If we must have this toll program where the revenue is put towards public transportation, then make sure that buses and subways are equipped with air filters, because these might become the only spaces of breathable air left in the city...ah, now I understand the plan's genius.