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California’s stringent cap and trade rules were scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1 2012 but a federal judge blocked it on Thursday. In my view, California’s cap and trade plans are unworkable, easily gamed, would raise energy prices substantially while accomplishing little to reduce emissions, and would probably drive even more business out [...] AB 32 is the landmark California bill that mandates greenhouse gas emissions in the state be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. One method it will use is cap-and-trade. However, a coalition of environmental justice groups sued to block it, saying cap-and-trade will do little but dump polluting industries in low-income neighborhoods as they [...] Under California’s landmark 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, the state must reduce greehouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Carbon trading, also known as cap and trade, is an essential part of this. The deadline for formalizing the plan is next month. But, as always, the devil is in the details. [...] In perhaps a startling decision from a court generally known for being liberal, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith has tentatively ruled that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) violated state law in enacting plans for reducing greenhouse gases and implementing cap-and-trade. He said CARB failed to complete a required environmental review and [...] Cap and trade is mandatory in the EU for large corporations. They must participate. And guess what, it is successful. Unlike in the US where a a timid little voluntary cap and trade system was tried and predictably failed, the EU system has demonstrably lowered emissions and increased the use of clean, renewable energy. [...] Cap-and-trade is dead in the US, killed by an uninterested Obama Administration and the Republican mid-term victories. It was always a kludgy idea, made worse by being voluntary not mandatory and also easily gamed by investment banks who just viewed it as one more potential revenue stream to be manipulated. Obama of course has [...] Washington’s blog The economists who invented cap-and-trade say that it won’t work for global warming European criminal investigators have determined that there is a tremendous amount of fraud occurring in the carbon trading market. Indeed, organized crime has largely taken over the European cap and trade market. Former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic [...] The government says cap and trade dropped acid rain emissions 50% in the Northeast. However, dealing with GHGs worldwide is way more complicated than reducing one pollutant gas in one area. Especially when polluters could and did simply move polluting plants from the Northeast to elsewhere. Also, low-sulfur coal became economical at the same [...] Here’s one of the problems with carbon credits — It is very easy for developing countries to game the system. They can essentially say that they were planning to do something environmentally damaging, then switch to a ‘greener option’ and collect carbon credit income. Yet if the greener option was their original intent then [...] According to top experts, risky derivatives were not only largely responsible for bringing down the American (and world) economy, but they still pose a substantial systemic risk. Now, Bloomberg notes that the carbon trading scheme will be largely centered around derivatives. CDS were invented by Blythe Masters, who now heads JPMorgan’s carbon trading and insists [...] |  | ||||
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