Carbon Trading: A $64 Billion Economy And Growing

DISCOVER Magazine:

Josh Margolis keeps a grueling schedule, brokering deals between buyers and sellers and forecasting how government actions could affect his clients. But his obsession is not stocks, or bonds, or oil futures. As co-CEO of the San Francisco--based company CantorCO2e, Margolis is part of an exploding branch of finance in a new commodity: carbon.

Mainstream financial institutions including Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs are joining the booming carbon market, which continues even through the current economic jitters. According to the World Bank, global trades in this market in 2007 were valued at more than $64 billion, more than doubling since 2006.

Read the whole story: DISCOVER Magazine

Comments

[lmvd3]

Carbon trading is a "shell game" that maximizes emissions, and thus pollution. Let's move on from this pro-business tactic, and do something that's actually "pro-people"/ "pro-environment"!

[Anciano]

Let's apply the "free market" solution to other proscribed activies:
Burglary credits for example. I sell my right to burglarize homes in my neighborhood to a broker. Let's look at the positive effects of that:
I get money for not burglarizing homes.
The broker, a smart Ivy League graduate does not have to really work, can make obscene amounts of money skimming pennies of the billions that pass through his hands and can maintain a trophy wife.
GDP is raised by the "value" of the credits.
The free market bids up the price of the credits, making the cost of legal burglary higher, thus preventing burglaries from occuring.
Would someone please explain the difference between breaking into peoples' lungs and burglarizing their houses?

[ObjectiveRealist]

Great comment!
[
GDP is raised by the "value" of the credits.
]

You might enjoy this article about the "broken window fallacy."
http://mises.org/story/2868

[wdw505]

well stated.......hold on let me do my part for my carbon footprint and toss another log on the fire

[alvdh1]

This a complete hoax that attempts to give the illusion that air pollution is being dealt with by industrial polluters. The reasonable apporach would be to impose a carbon tax that would be used exclusively for energy efficiency across the worlds economies. Every building, house and energy consuming activity needs to have their operations examined for ineffeiciencies. For example, every light that can conceiveably be replaced with LED lighting needs to be replaced. Single pane windows need to be replaced with triple pane windows, Heating and cooling systems need to be evaulated and repalced with the best available technology. Insulation should be applied wherever needed. For new buildings, LEED Cerification should be revised to incorporate all of the above because the current LEED standards are a joke. Once this is accomplished, then full scale wind and solar development will become economical and make sense.

Therefore, a carbon tax is necessary to fund the massive energy efficiency program required to reduce carbon emissions.

[wdw505]

let me do my part for my carbon footprint and toss another log on the fire.......are you going to tax my fireplace?

[mouselion]

The only way to effectively cut carbon emissions is for every enterprise to be responsible for cutting their own emissions. Buying carbon credits from another part of the world does nothing for the eco-health of a specific region. Write you congressme­n/senators about this, tell them to help change this. On Janurary 20, write EPA secretary Lisa Jackson and Energy secretary Steven Chu on this matter. No more shell games!

[potshots]

thanks, mouselion. I used to work in an international business and this has the smell of European bureaucratic job creation.

I am against pollution 100% and I want to attack it by doing away with pollution where we can do away with it, not start trading it.

We didn't trade car pollution. we mandated catalytic converters for every car on the road. People would not believe what life is like in places where catalytic converters are not required. You really can hardly breathe at rush hour.

Let us continue progress through technological innovation that seeks to replace carbon emissions with clean energy.

[blimie]

Booming carbon market? Mainstream financial institutions jumping on it? It's going to be fake and another money making scheme. It's a way for dirty pollulting industries to keep making a lot of profit and you know they are going to figure out a way to tax us. We can clean up the environment without these merchants of sludge taking advantage of us.

[mouselion]

Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and Goldman Sachs are getting involved, it's time to look at this very closely...

[loki]

And it still does nothing to help the environment. But, it does increase the income of the wealthiest in the world. So they would call it a great success.

[Semaj51]

Lets see.... I owe a couple hundred acres of woods which I have no plans on developing or cutting down the trees. Under this carbon trade act I can sell my "carbon savings" to a factory down the street. I get extra money, the factory has to increase the costs of their products to cover the "carbon trading", and the earth does not see one particle of carbon disappearing. What a great rip-off....