Energy-heavy industries and coal-dependent countries like Poland argue against market intervention in the [European Emissions Trading System (ETS)] while noting that higher carbon prices leads to higher energy costs that result in a burden on businesses while European economies remain weak. The arguments against intervention may be working, as Germany -- which also harbors deep concerns about the burden cap-and-trade could have on industry -- continues to stall, and the ETS remains mostly useless. A failure on backloading would likely drop carbon credits to a level only slightly above penny stocks.(Via Instapundit.)
"This should be the final wake-up call," said EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, according to wire reports. "Something has to be done urgently...."
January 27, 2013
"The European cap-and-trade system has slid into near meaninglessness as Germany bickers on the sidelines."
"Hopes that the election in Lower Saxony might resolve the high-level bickering were misguided. Now Europe's carbon market has hit a new low."
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The consequences: They were unexpected!
Can you short these suckers?
The carbon trading died in Chicago, already, I think.
Hmmm...create a market where the value is entirely artificial, representing literally nothing but governmentally created scarcity, and then have it operate within an unstable conglomeration of bureaucratic, posturing scuabblers.
Is anyone here familiar with the regulations governing the length of time we have to pretend to be suprised that it's failing?
But how else are millions of anti-industrialists, anti-capitalists, command economy type watermelons going to bring us paradise on Earth, so we can have the right people in charge?
I mean this is just about science, right?
And 'the science is settled' is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
Lower Saxony this, Lower Saxony that; what about Upper Saxony? It always gets short shrift.
This has been an Urgent And Vital Issue for much of my middle age.
Maybe Al Gore believes so fervently in the cause he'll sell his worldly goods to save the carbon trading market; starting his own wildlife conservation effort.
Maybe he'll just give everything up, grow a beard and stand out on a street corner with a sign.
Prince Charles is there.
p.s.-Why don't democratic ex-presidents get out of the spotlight? Partly because their ideas until now haven't been a majority. They feel the need to evangelize in addition to needing the light, heat and sense of importance.
Hard to take so-called climate change seriously when the elites travel to Davos several times a year to wine and dine and deliberate the big issues like how the proles like us should live.
Germany screwed up the market for carbon indulgences. This should set the stage for some kind of reforms.
Last time Germany "bickered", everything west of the Urals had a swastika on it.
PS Lower Saxony, I read that and I think maybe they ought to go back to the Holy Roman Empire.
If one believes carbon is a problem, The Pigou Club would have us do away with the failing system and go with pigovian taxes. Of course, they would demand that other taxes be adjusted so the tax burden doesn't increase. The enacting pols would view the taxes as an 'in addition to'.
I prefer the current 'failing' system. Indeed, something has to be done urgently, just not the thing the urgent believe must be done.
The best working definitions of Climate Change and Cap-and-Trade.
Well, it is 36F in Hamburg right now and if SOMETHING ISN'T DONE about global warming, it might be, like 38F on this date in 2100 Which would obviously be a disaster for humanity, so better raise taxes now!
Bad science combined with bad economics. No wonder it is failing. The U.S. managed without carbon indulgences to reduce CO2 emissions more than the Europeans, and the Chinese and Indians keep increasing theirs, seeing an advantage ceded them by AGW panic in the west, and exploiting it.
Now, if CO2 caused AGW were really true, the best solution would probably be to burn down our forests and annex Canada, which has plenty of its own forests that we could also burn down. Even if they got the Brits involved, they still wouldn't have the troops to resist, and all that global warming would be opening up wide swaths of Canada for farming. Win-win, and the majority English speaking Canadians would no longer need to learn French.
It's a stupid idea even when it's not a mess of corruption and waste. That's why here in California we passed our own little statewide version. We will save the planet all by ourselves if we have to. You have to admit that we deserve it. California voters are like those Middle Easterners that beat themselves to a bloody mess in the name of religion. Our religion is environmentalism, and we are much more devoted than the rest of you sinners.
"Germany screwed up the market for carbon indulgences. This should set the stage for some kind of reforms."
You're reading my mind. Someone's got to come along and nail a thesis to a door, bring us back to the true faith, uncorrupted by profligate greed. And don't confuse us with heretical science.
Reforms, reforms?
Please no more steenking reforms!
Why is everyone saying that it's failing?
It is the cornerstone of Obama's second term.
From Powerline:
...Yesterday the Research Council of Norway—that would be one of those national research bodies that the climateers relentlessly tell us we should pay attention to—issued the conclusion that global warming is likely to be much less severe than the “consensus” estimate of 2 – 4.5 degrees C. The Norwegian body thinks it will top out at 1.9 degrees:
Professor Berntsen explains the changed predictions: “The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.
“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now....”
I have a cuz who is an EU bureaucrat. In the 2008 campaign season, I asked him about cap & trade in the EU, and if it really produces the intended results. He said it is a scheme of corruption that prevents new businesses and industries from forming. There's all kinds of influence peddling and bribery that goes on with it, and it is not effective in making one iota of difference for the environment.
It's a final wake-up call Connie. Just not the one you think it is.
The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s
Bullshit. One anomalous year--1998. A lot like 1933. No matter what Ken Burns says Mother Earth wasn't "paying us back" for our hubris with The Dust Bowl. Did all that new farmland go back to forest after? No. Did it ever happen again. No. Leftie fuckhead.
Cap-and-trade worked for acid rain, because there was economically feasible technology available. That is not the case for CO2. Yet the enviros stick their fingers in the ears and yell "nah-nah-nah can't hear you!"
CO2 + Water = Perfect Combustion (hydrocarbon)
Who needs to be better than perfection?
My favorite part of that whole thing was where the guy goes "something must be done urgently or the last in a series of ineluctable interglacial periods will be ineluctable."
The proper response to all this AGW nonsense is:
Don't do something, just stand there!!
If AGW were true, we would see relentless warming as CO2 concentrations increase globally each year. Instead we see cooling periods interspersed with warming, and with plateaus in between (as we have the last 16 years.
Some AGW zealots are now beginning to concede that "something" in the environment affects the climate much more than the trace gas CO2, but the computer models they rely on for their dire predictions cannot identify it.
Another casualty of tracking.
They fear the American cheap energy juggernaut, and they should.
ricpic said, "Lower Saxony this, Lower Saxony that; what about Upper Saxony? It always gets short shrift."
Well, there is no 'Upper Saxony' as such, though there are two other German states called Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
A "Climate Commissioner" named Connie? Since it's a big con, how appropriate!
Hmm, just had a thought. Ritmo is always going on about how austerity, budget cutting, a deficit of less than a trillion a year is bad because the Europeans are doing it more than we are and their economies are worse.
Gee, I wonder if their carbon management efforts could have something to do with their economies tanking? It seems that Germany, Poland et cetera think so. But what do they know.
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