Market slide

Quite a bump huh? Sort of like the bump the carbon market has
taken in Europe - you have been watching haven’t you, since it is bound
to show up here?

In a fresh blow to the discredited EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS),
carbon prices have fallen to their lowest level ever, reducing the
incentive for companies to cut pollution levels.

That was in Jan. It has gone lower still.

As US states mull setting up their own market to
trade in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, they are casting a worried eye
on the almighty crash in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System
(ETS), the first and so far only significant market in carbon.

A year ago, CO2 was changing hands in the ETS at 30 euros (33 dollars)
a tonne, triple that at the market’s launch in January 2005.

Today, a tonne of CO2 can be bought for little more than one euro.

To outsiders, a market in a gas that is colourless, odourless,
tasteless, and crosses borders seems a daft way of trying to cope with
a global pollution problem.

Dion is calling for Canada to set up a carbon market here. Heaven help us.

The thing is with a market you can buy credits when they are low
and sell them when they rise, like any other market without reducing
any emissions at all  (even supposing this is at
all necessary to the survival of us all) And if the
emissions you produce are exaggerated and you then get a quota of credits for reducing those
emissions which you can sell…? Bingo. That’s the game the Russians, among others, are
playing. There is lots of opportunity to manipulate this market.

AND

Remember Bre-X?
Remember the dot com bubble?
Remember Nortel?
Remember ENRON?

Value based on belief. “They” have made “carbon” a commodity with some
kind of value. But what happens if suddenly no one believes carbon is
important anymore? When the ballon is popped, when some honest child
says “The emperor has no clothes!”, when belief is gone the market
will fall. Count on it. In the short term some
people will clean up- the Russians, the Chinese, and Maurice Strong et Al- they’ll  make pots of money, and in the long term the
general populace
will get pasted royally.

Meanwhile here is the latest from Antarctica:

Yeah yeah, we know. We are cranks. We are deniers. We are in good company.