The British government has shelved plans to get people to reduce their carbon footprint by allowing them to trade personal emissions permits because it would be too expensive and ambitious. After studying ways of encouraging individuals to cut their CO2 emissions so they could sell their excess permits to those who exceed their carbon quota, the environment ministry has concluded it is not yet practical.
—Reuters, 8 May 2008
In its report, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the carbon trading scheme had an “inherent fairness”, as everyone would get the same allowance. ..But a government report said the scheme would cost up to £2 billion to set up and seemed like a “big brother” idea….However, Defra, which carried out interviews with 92 people, also found a “strong lack of trust in the government in doing this and a reluctance for individuals to have to contribute financially”. One respondent said: “Just straight away it reminds me of going back to the war and rationing.”
—BBC News, 9 May 2008
Surprise, surprise. After months of threatening us with environmental Armageddon, scientists are now saying global warming may be put on hold for ten years. Gordon Brown’s U-turn technique has even spread to the science lobby. Could it be that our listening Prime Minister and his chums at Westminster will U-turn again and park the policies of crucifying drivers by huge taxes on fuel to save the planet while hammering the UK way of life? Go on, Gordon, give us leadership by cutting fuel tax to help restore the British economy and provide further help for the citizens you attacked in the 10p tax rate Budget fiasco.
–Iain McConnel, The Scotsman, 8 May 2008
One important development at this election was a formal agreement with the Green party calling for second preference mayoral votes for each other. This benefited the Greens – who added 40,000 votes and maintained their share of the vote and existing number of London assembly seats – but also aided the high turnout and Labour. Had I been re-elected I would have given Green nominees a central role in my administration.
–Ken Livingstone, The Guardian, 9 May 2008
In the election for London’s Mayor, the Greens got just over three per cent of the vote. They struggled elsewhere to poll anywhere near that. Yet Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Nationalists dance slavishly to the Green tune. Why do we put up with this “green” extortion to so little purpose? That’s the real mystery.
–Bernard Ingham, The Yorkshire Post, 7 May 2008
Excerpts from CCNet, 9th May 2008
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
There wes a young lady from Ealing
Who thought she had no sexual feeling
‘Til this feller named Boris
Kissed her on the clitoris
And she had to be scraped off the ceiling.
I enjoy that, boris. 😉
The basic premise behind carbon credits scheme is quite positive. The idea is to create a market to assign value to a piece of the macroeconomic system that has hitherto been left out of the equation, then let the free market of goods, services and ideas evolve to deal with the problem from there. In theory it is the opposite of government mandated carbon emission controls.
It’s a dilemma well known to farmers. Since the market for farm products doesn’t directly assign any value to the natural resources of the farm, i.e. the soil, trees, biodiversity or water, the pressure is for farmers to borrow against the ecological health of their land as if it were a free resource.
In the same way the price of petrol doesn’t include the cost of saving the planet from the looming global apocalypse ahead.
The difference between the inability of the market to assign price values to difficult to measure things like biodiversity and soil health and the pricing of carbon is that the former have real value, if unmeasured, while the later value can only be based on a belief in AGW doomsday.
So don’t sell the farm to buy shares in a C trading equities offer, just yet.
Wes, with a value said to be $30 bil. rising to $1 tril. soon, the carbon market smacks of “Tulipmania”.
If the science is wrong [either completely or in varying degrees] the warministas won’t want to admit it, all our super will be invested in it and we’ll walk off into the sunset singing, “We’ll all go down together”!
All eyes will focus on Al to see when he cuts and runs.
I completely agree, Sir Drongo. In fact, Tulipmania had crossed my mind.
Nevertheless, the need of applying some kind of price markers to intangible, but important environment resources is something that is going to be an increasing important paradigm, if we wish to avoid a command economy. Carbon credits are one of the first attempts at this sort of thing. Too bad it’s based on a false premise. I hope it doesn’t discourage other more empirically based efforts to give value to unvalued resources.
The problem (and the genius) with carbon credits is that the scheme is based on the idea CO2 can be traded like a commodity.
Problem is that CO2 is far more difficult to price than real commodities like wheat or iron ore where a vibrant market naturally does the pricing without any help from the UN. A bushel of wheat or a ton of iron ore carries its intrinsic value in and of itself.
Carbon has no value outside of an artificially constructed trading scheme based on the rather shaky narrative that AGW must be stopped.
This doesn’t mean carbon trading can’t work, just that it is far less plausible than a naturally occurring market and that like sub-prime mortgage trading any carbon market will be subject to complete and utter collapse should something unexpected happen—perhaps a spat of media reports predicting global cooling, for instance.
So government has to kick-start an artificial market and this is creating all sort of opportunity for con artists and intrusive, very un-free market government behaviour as well. Ultimately there is no way for a self-sustaining natural market to get off the ground until AGW becomes a far more obvious “consensus.” People have to “believe” in the integrity, transparency and good regulation of markets, especially artificial ones such as future and options exchanges. The modern bourse took generations to evolve the very conditional trust they enjoy today. C trading can’t spring up over night simply by government mandate and a minority faith in a doomsday prophecy.
Where’s Ian Mott when you need the bloke? He would know more about markets than I.
I’ve been total that the Bhutanese government has a Minister of Happiness, who keeps statistics on the Happiness level of the nation’s citizens and it is a much prize economic indicator.
Imagine that!
Yeah, yeah … and Australia has a Minister for Innovation, while Zimbabwe has a Minister for Justice. Imagine either of those, too!
One of the problems with a Carbon market is: what is the product and who is the end user? If the money is used to compensate lower income earners, then all we are doing is selling each other insurance. If it is used to seed new technologies, then welcome to Rort City (come on down Al Gore). If it is used to fund 3rd world countries to plant trees, then we are probably all doomed before we start.
“All eyes will focus on Al to see when he cuts and runs.”
Al Gore, what would you do without him?
SJT, I’ve never been good enough to pick the end of a boom but in your case maybe Al will let you know.
A market has to have something of value in order to function. Being forced to compete to purchase an abstraction will only result in perversion – and more unintended consequences.