A collapsing carbon market makes mega-pollution cheap

[bijou]

'Roll up for the great pollution fire sale, the ultimate chance to wreck the climate on the cheap. You sir, over there, from the power company - look at this lovely tonne of freshly made, sulphur-rich carbon dioxide. Last summer it cost an eyewatering €31 to throw up your smokestack, but in our give-away global recession sale, that's been slashed to a crazy €8.20. Dump plans for the wind turbine! Compare our offer with costly solar energy! At this low, low price you can't afford not to burn coal!"

Set up to price pollution out of existence, carbon trading is pricing it back in. Europe's carbon markets are in collapse.

Yet the hiss of escaping gas is almost inaudible. There's no big news headline, nothing sensational for TV viewers to watch; no queues outside banks or missing Texan showmen. You can't see or hear a market for a pollutant tumble. But at stake is what was supposed to be a central lever in the world's effort to turn back climate change. Intended to price fossil fuels out of the market, the system is instead turning them into the rational economic choice.

That there exists something called carbon trading is about all that most people know. A few know, too, that Europe has created carbon exchanges, and traders who buy and sell. Few but the professionals, however, know that this market is now failing in its purpose: to edge up the cost of emitting CO2.

The theory sounded fine in the boom years, back when Nicholas Stern described climate change as "the biggest market failure in history" - a market failure to which carbon trading was meant to be a market solution. Instead, it's bolstering the business case for fossil fuels.

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Oh noes, liberals run smack into the law of supply and demand. 

[Peter3_1]

The idea that CO2 is a "polutant" is silly. It is an INTEGRAL part of all life on earth, and likely elsewhere too (if any). In addition, there is no direct evidence that the annual average increase in atmospheric CO2 (TWO parts per million on 380 ppm) and life survived nicely 65million plus years ago and more, with 4,000 ppm CO2 atmosphereic content.

As the Gorean superstition loses credibility, demand for credits falls . Better the nations holding credits build their own "infrastructure" using the credits than selling them off for one shot cash in the hip pocket. Eventually, carbon credits will be worth zero, and the selling nations will be left holding a pig in a poke.