Carbon Currency to Replace All Paper Currencies, Limiting Manufacturing, Food Production and People Movement

If the global elite intends for Carbon Currency to supplant national currencies, then the world economic and political systems will also be fundamentally changed forever. Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth. An integral part of Technocracy was to implement an economic system based on energy allocation rather than price, replacing traditional money with Energy Credits. Technocracy's focus on the efficient use of energy is likely the first hint of a sustained ecological/environmental movement in the United States. Modern emphasis on curtailing carbon fuel consumption that causes global warming and CO2 emissions is essentially a product of early Technocratic thinking. To facilitate an equilibrium between man and nature, Technocracy proposed that citizens would receive Energy Certificates in order to operate the economy. Two key differences between price-based money and Energy Certificates are that (a) money is generic to the holder while Certificates are individually registered to each citizen and (b) money persists while Certificates expire. The latter facet would greatly hinder, if not altogether prevent, the accumulation of wealth and property. Because of the connection between the environmental movement, global warming and the Technocratic concept of Energy Certificates, one would expect that a Carbon Currency would be suggested from that particular community, and in fact, this is the case.

Cutting Through the Matrix (Excerpt)

Rothschild and Gore's New Song – Every Breath You Take, The More Money We Make

By Alan Watt, cuttingthroughthematrix.com
February 2, 2010

...If you’ve noticed today too, especially in the last I’d say 5 years, we’ve found that ADVISORY boards are on everybody’s governments today; unelected advisory boards made up of supposed academia and scientific specialists.

This is the RISE of technocracy that’s supposed to take us over and bring us into a planned society where our whole way of life is to be altered completely.

Remember, the members of the Club of Rome were given the job, the task, of finding a way to UNITE humanity, to unite them under a common cause, maybe a war type scenario, so that we’d give up our rights, go along with all the new ideas they’d give to us, but ultimately to bring in a controlled, ordered, planned society.

That means family planning for everyone across the entire planet in a post-nationalistic world, an INTERdependent society, with their global order. That’s again, what the United Nations is ultimately supposed to rise up to; the occasion to be the boss of all of this, corrupt as they are, mind you.

We never get beyond that, that so much has been really planned for us. Our education goes towards this CREATION of a reality to foster obedience to a system. That’s really what your education is all about. It is very true that you’re told very little about reality while you are in school. You are told all you NEED to know… by your masters. They certainly discourage thinking outside of the box in academia. You parrot what your professor says and you make good marks and you come through. That means you’re given a scroll at the end. Your head is ‘squared’ and that means that you have been given a QUALITY APPROVAL STAMP to join their system and work for them, your masters in this world. But you’ll never really figure it out for yourself.

There is a good article here on Carbon Currency (see below). This fits into this topic. Carbon currency — I’ve told you already that this carbon tax, and so on, is not to be just put on big business and big corporations — it’s to come down to YOU. How much YOU will cost society from birth to death, and you are going to pay for it, you see. You will get personal tax, carbon tax invoices, bills coming from the governments across the world. That is part of it. This goes back again into technocracy.

Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?

By Patrick Wood, canadafreepress.com
January 26, 2010

Introduction

Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps thinking too small.

On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and the economic system upon which they are based.

The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current price-based economic system — and its related currencies that have supported capitalism, socialism, fascism and communism — is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make way for a new carbon-based world.

It is plainly evident that the world is laboring under a dying system of price-based economics as evidenced by the rapid decline of paper currencies. The era of fiat (irredeemable paper currency) was introduced in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from gold. (Alan: Actually, it was already in fractional reserve long before that.) Because the dollar-turned-fiat was the world’s primary reserve asset, (A: Because the dollar was its primary asset) all other currencies eventually followed suit, leaving us today with a global sea of paper that is increasingly undesired, unstable, unusable.

The deathly economic state of today’s world is a direct reflection of the sum of its sick and dying currencies, but this could soon change.

Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth.

(A: That’s the real reasons for this con game of environmental control, global warming and so on. These are the real reasons behind it. Remember, that’s WHAT they dreamt up at the Club of Rome.)

Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.

What is Carbon Currency and how does it work? In a nutshell, Carbon Currency will be based on the regular allocation of available energy to the people of the world. If not used within a period of time, the Currency will expire (like monthly minutes on your cell phone plan) so that the same people can receive a new allocation based on new energy production quotas for the next period.

(A: I’ve mentioned before, Bertrand Russell wrote in the 40s about this very system when he said that eventually the government will dish out CREDITS to the public. Of course now we know it will be carbon credits. But he said the same thing, everyone on the bottom level would start off with the same amount, you can’t save it up, it starts at the same amount every Monday. That’s all to do with control. This is not a new idea. It’s an ongoing movement by a very well organized group that’s been here for an awful long time.)

Because the energy supply chain is already dominated by the global elite, setting energy production quotas will limit the amount of Carbon Currency in circulation at any one time. It will also naturally limit manufacturing, food production and people movement.

Local currencies could remain in play for a time, but they would eventually wither and be fully replaced by the Carbon Currency, much the same way that the Euro displaced individual European currencies over a period of time.

Sounds very modern in concept, doesn’t it? In fact, these ideas date back to the 1930’s.

(A: It’s actually much older) when hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens were embracing a new political ideology called Technocracy and the promise it held for a better life.

(A: Actually, I’ve got writings from the organizations in the 1800s talking about it, from the minutes of their meetings.)

Even now-classic literature was heavily influenced by Technocracy: George Orwell’s 1984, H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come and Huxley’s “scientific dictatorship” in Brave New World.

This paper investigates the rebirth of Technocracy and its potential to recast the New World Order into something truly “new” and also totally unexpected by the vast majority of modern critics.

Background

Philosophically, Technocracy found it roots in the scientific autocracy of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and in the positivism of Auguste Comte (1798- 1857), the father of the social sciences. Positivism elevated science and the scientific method above metaphysical revelation. Technocrats embraced positivism because they believed that social progress was possible only through science and technology. [Schunk, Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, 5th, 315]

The social movement of Technocracy, with its energy-based accounting system, can be traced back to the 1930’s when an obscure group of engineers and scientists offered it as a solution to the Great Depression.

The principal scientist behind Technocracy was M. King Hubbert, a young geoscientist who would later (in 1948-1956) invent the now-famous Peak Oil Theory, also known as the Hubbert Peak Theory. Hubbert stated that the discovery of new energy reserves and their production would be outstripped by usage, thereby eventually causing economic and social havoc. Many modern followers of Peak Oil Theory believe that the 2007-2009 global recession was exacerbated in part by record oil prices that reflected validity of the theory.

Hubbert received all of his higher education at the University of Chicago, graduating with a PhD in 1937, and later taught geophysics at Columbia University. He was highly acclaimed throughout his career, receiving many honors such as the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1977.

In 1933, Hubbert and Howard Scott formed an organization called Technocracy, Inc. Technocracy is derived from the Greek words “techne” meaning skill and “kratos”, meaning rule. Thus, it is government by skilled engineers, scientists and technicians as opposed to elected officials. It was opposed to all other forms of government, including communism, socialism and fascism, all of which function with a price-based economy.

As founders of the organization and political movement called Technocracy, Inc., Hubbert and Scott also co-authored Technocracy Study Course in 1934. This book serves as the “bible” of Technocracy and is the root document to which most all modern technocratic thinking can be traced.

Technocracy postulated that only scientists and engineers were capable of running a complex, technology-based society. Because technology, they reasoned, changed the social nature of societies, previous methods of government and economy were made obsolete. They disdained politicians and bureaucrats, who they viewed as incompetent. By utilizing the scientific method and scientific management techniques, Technocrats hoped to squeeze the massive inefficiencies out of running a society, thereby providing more benefits for all members of society while consuming less resources.

The other integral part of Technocracy was to implement an economic system based on energy allocation rather than price. They proposed to replace traditional money with Energy Credits.

Their keen focus on the efficient use of energy is likely the first hint of a sustained ecological/environmental movement in the United States. Technocracy Study Course stated, for instance,

Although it (the earth) is not an isolated system the changes in the configuration of matter on the earth, such as the erosion of soil, the making of mountains, the burning of coal and oil, and the mining of metals are all typical and characteristic examples of irreversible processes, involving in each case an increase of entropy. (Technocracy Study Course, Hubbert & Scott, p. 49)

Modern emphasis on curtailing carbon fuel consumption that causes global warming and CO2 emissions is essentially a product of early Technocratic thinking.

As scientists, Hubbert and Scott tried to explain (or justify) their arguments in terms of physics and the law of thermodynamics, which is the study of energy conversion between heat and mechanical work.

Entropy is a concept within thermodynamics that represents the amount of energy in a system that is no longer available for doing mechanical work. Entropy thus increases as matter and energy in the system degrade toward the ultimate state of inert uniformity.

In layman’s terms, entropy means once you use it, you lose it for good. Furthermore, the end state of entropy is “inert uniformity” where nothing takes place. Thus, if man uses up all the available energy and/or destroys the ecology, it cannot be repeated or restored ever again.

The Technocrat’s avoidance of social entropy is to increase the efficiency of society by the careful allocation of available energy and measuring subsequent output in order to find a state of “equilibrium,” or balance. Hubbert’s focus on entropy is evidenced by Technocracy, Inc.’s logo, the well-known Yin Yang symbol that depicts balance.

To facilitate this equilibrium between man and nature, Technocracy proposed that citizens would receive Energy Certificates in order to operate the economy:

“Energy Certificates are issued individually to every adult of the entire population… The record of one’s income and its rate of expenditure is kept by the Distribution Sequence, so that it is a simple matter at any time for the Distribution Sequence to ascertain the state of a given customer’s balance… When making purchases of either goods or services an individual surrenders the Energy Certificates properly identified and signed.

“The significance of this, from the point of view of knowledge of what is going on in the social system, and of social control, can best be appreciated when one surveys the whole system in perspective. First, one single organization is manning and operating the whole social mechanism. The same organization not only produces but also distributes all goods and services.

“With this information clearing continuously to a central headquarters we have a case exactly analogous to the control panel of a power plant, or the bridge of an ocean liner…” [Technocracy Study Course, Hubbert & Scott,p. 238-239]

Two key differences between price-based money and Energy Certificates are that:

a) money is generic to the holder while Certificates are individually registered to each citizen; and

b) money persists while Certificates expire.

The latter facet would greatly hinder, if not altogether prevent, the accumulation of wealth and property.

Transition

At the start of WWII, Technocracy’s popularity dwindled as economic prosperity returned, however both the organization and its philosophy survived.

Today, there are two principal websites representing Technocracy in North America: Technocracy, Inc., located in Ferndale, Washington, is represented at www.technocracy.org. A sister organization in Vancouver, British Columbia is Technocracy Vancouver, can be found at www.technocracyvan.ca.

While Technocracy’s original focus was exclusively on the North American continent, it is now growing rapidly in Europe and other industrialized nations.

For instance, the Network of European Technocrats was formed in 2005 as “an autonomous research and social movement that aims to explore and develop both the theory and design of technocracy.” The NET website claims to have members around the world.

Of course, a few minor league organizations and their websites cannot hope to create or implement a global energy policy, but it’s not because the ideas aren’t still alive and well.

A more likely influence on modern thinking is due to Hubbert’s Peak Oil Theory introduced in 1954. It has figured prominently in the ecological/environmental movement. In fact, the entire global warming movement indirectly sits on top of the Hubbert Peak Theory.

As the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome recently stated,

“The issue of peak oil impinges directly on the climate change question.” (see John H. Walsh, “The Impending Twin Crisis – One Set of Solutions?, p.5.)

The Modern Proposal

Because of the connection between the environmental movement, global warming and the Technocratic concept of Energy Certificates, one would expect that a Carbon Currency would be suggested from that particular community, and in fact, this is the case.

In 1995, Judith Hanna wrote in New Scientist, “Toward a single carbon currency”,

“My proposal is to set a global quota for fossil fuel combustion every year, and to share it equally between all the adults in the world.”

In 2004, the prestigious Harvard International Review published “A New Currency” and stated,

“For those keen to slow global warming, the most effective actions are in the creation of strong national carbon currencies… For scholars and policymakers, the key task is to mine history for guides that are more useful. Global warming is considered an environmental issue, but its best solutions are not to be found in the canon of environmental law. Carbon’s ubiquity in the world economy demands that cost be a consideration in any regime to limit emissions. Indeed, emissions trading has been anointed king because it is the most responsive to cost. And since trading emissions for carbon is more akin to trading currency than eliminating a pollutant, policymakers should be looking at trade and finance with an eye to how carbon markets should be governed. We must anticipate the policy challenges that will arise as this bottom-up system emerges, including the governance of seams between each of the nascent trading systems, liability rules for bogus permits, and judicial cooperation. [Emphasis added]

HIR concludes that “after seven years of spinning wheels and wrong analogies, the international regime to control carbon is headed, albeit tentatively, down a productive path.”

In 2006, UK Environment Secretary David Miliband spoke to the Audit Commission Annual Lecture and flatly stated,

"Imagine a country where carbon becomes a new currency. We carry bankcards that store both pounds and carbon points. When we buy electricity, gas and fuel, we use our carbon points, as well as pounds. To help reduce carbon emissions, the Government would set limits on the amount of carbon that could be used." [Emphasis added]

In 2007, New York Times published “When Carbon Is Currency” by Hannah Fairfield. She pointedly stated,

“To build a carbon market, its originators must create a currency of carbon credits that participants can trade.”

PointCarbon, a leading global consultancy, is partnered with Bank of New York Mellon to assess rapidly growing carbon markets. In 2008 they published “Towards a Common Carbon Currency: Exploring the prospects for integrated global carbon markets.” This report discusses both environmental and economic efficiency in a similar context as originally seen with Hubbert in 1933.

Finally, on November 9, 2009, the Telegraph (UK) presented an article “Everyone in Britain could be given a personal ‘carbon allowance.’”

“… implementing individual carbon allowances for every person will be the most effective way of meeting the targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity. Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using. If their "carbon account" hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits”.

As you can see, these references are hardly minor league in terms of either authorship or content. The undercurrent of early Technocratic thought has finally reached the shore where the waves are lapping at the beach.

Technocracy’s Energy Card Prototype

In July 1937 an article by Howard Scott in Technocracy Magazine described an Energy Distribution Card in great detail. It declared that using such an instrument as a “means of accounting is a part of Technocracy’s proposed change in the course of how our socioeconomic system can be organized.”

Scott further wrote,

“The certificate will be issued directly to the individual. It is nontransferable and nonnegotiable; therefore, it cannot be stolen, lost, loaned, borrowed, or given away. It is noncumulative; therefore, it cannot be saved, and it does not accrue or bear interest. It need not be spent but loses its validity after a designated time period.”

This may have seemed like science fiction in 1937, but today it is wholly achievable. In 2010 Technocracy, Inc. offers an updated idea of what such an Energy Distribution Card might look like. Their website states,

“It is now possible to use a plastic card similar to today’s credit card embedded with a microchip. This chip could contain all the information needed to create an energy distribution card as described in this booklet. Since the same information would be provided in whatever forms best suits the latest technology, however, the concept of an ‘Energy Distribution Card’ is what is explained here.”

If you study the card above, you will also note that is serves as a universal identity card and contains a microchip. This reflects Technocracy’s philosophy that each person in society must be meticulously monitored and accounted for in order to track what they consume in terms of energy, and also what they contribute to the manufacturing process.

Carbon Market Players

The modern system of carbon credits was an invention of the Kyoto Protocol and started to gain momentum in 2002 with the establishment of the first domestic economy-wide trading scheme in the U.K. After becoming international law in 2005, the trading market is now predicted to reach $3 trillion by 2020 or earlier.

Graciela Chichilnisky, director of the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management and a designer of the carbon credit text of the Kyoto Protocol, states that the carbon market “is therefore all about cash and trading – but it is also a way to a profitable and greener future.” (See Who Needs a Carbon Market?)

Who are the “traders” that provide the open door to all this profit? Currently leading the pack are JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Bloomberg noted in Carbon Capitalists on December 4, 2009, that:

“The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbon-related financial products to outside investors.”

At JP Morgan, the woman who originally invented Credit Default Swaps, Blythe Masters, is now head of the department that will trade carbon credits for the bank.

Considering the sheer force of global banking giants behind carbon trading, it’s no wonder analysts are already predicting that the carbon market will soon dwarf all other commodities trading.

Conclusion

Where there is smoke, there is fire. Where there is talk, there is action.

If M. King Hubbert and other early architects of Technocracy were alive today, they would be very pleased to see the seeds of their ideas on energy allocation grow to bear fruit on such a large scale. In 1933, the technology didn’t exist to implement a system of Energy Certificates. However, with today’s ever-advancing computer technology, the entire world could easily be managed on a single computer.

This article intended to show that:

• Carbon Currency is not a new idea, but has deep roots in Technocracy
• Carbon Currency has grown from a continental proposal to a global proposal
• It has been consistently discussed over a long period of time
• The participants include many prominent global leaders, banks and think-tanks
• The context of these discussions have been very consistent
• Today’s goals for implementing Carbon Currency are virtually identical to Technocracy’s original Energy Certificates goals.

Of course, a currency is merely a means to an end. Whoever controls the currency also controls the economy and the political structure that goes with it. Inquiry into what such a system might look like will be a future topic.

Technocracy and energy-based accounting are not idle or theoretical issues. If the global elite intends for Carbon Currency to supplant national currencies, then the world economic and political systems will also be fundamentally changed forever.

What Technocracy could not achieve during the Great Depression appears to have finally found traction in the Great Recession.

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“I don’t care who the government is. Let me control the money and I will control the country.”

Mayer Amschel Rothschild (attributed to the German godfather of the Rothschild bank cartel and grandfather to heir Lord Baron Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild: owner of the Bank of England and a key promoter of the U.S. Federal Reserve Act. 1744-1812)

“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

President Thomas Jefferson (a founding father of America, condemning present and future monopoly money power. 1743-1826)

“I want to own nothing and control everything.”
“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”

John D. Rockefeller (promoter of the U.S. Federal Reserve Act in alliance with the Rothschild bloc. 1839-1937)

“We will have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether world government will be achieved by conquest or consent.”

James Paul Warburg (monopoly banker in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Warburg was an agent of the Rockefeller-JP Morgan-Rothschild banking bloc and son of Paul Warburg, chief architect of the Federal Reserve Corporation, an unconstitutional private bank monopoly set up for cartel hegemony. 2/17/1950)

"Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world."

Henry Kissinger (ex U.S. Secretary of State and ongoing agent for the ruling class. Living. Quote 1970)

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government of the U.S. ever since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.”

President FDR (on Fascist rule in a letter to corporate con man “Colonel” Edward M. House, a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations and political fixer for the ruling class. House also handled President Wilson for the foisting of the privately rigged Federal Reserve bank monopoly. 11/21/1933)

Global Carbon Trading and Associated ‘Fees’ Were Passed in the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill

Flashback: UN Climate Official Admits Climate Hoax is About Redistributing Wealth Globally

“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection”, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. “The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

usACTIONnews.com

November 19, 2010

We’ve been warning you that this is all about money and a political agenda, not about the environment. Now we get confirmation from the IPCC itself.

A Professor of the ‘Economics of Climate Change’, Edenhofer is Co-Chair of Working Group III of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) whose climate report is the political cover for almost all government action on global warming.

Just a year ago the disclosure of thousands of emails known as climategate showed that the information used for the IPCC’s climate report was fraudulent and manipulated to push the unproven theory of man made global warming.

Continuing disclosures of underlying ’studies’ showed that the IPCC did not use peer-reviewed scientific studies, as it claimed, but instead sought and referenced anything supporting its predetermined conclusion. One such ’study’ even turned out to be an opinion article by an environmental activist with no data whatsoever.

In an interview with Germany’s NZZ Online Edenhofer exposed the real purpose behind the climate change scam [red emphasis added]:

NZZ am Sonntag: The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

Edenhofer: That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

Edenhofer: Basically it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet – and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 – there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

Edenhofer: First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

But unlike the financial crisis, in climate policy a country benefits if it does not join in.

The financial crisis was an emergency operation – in the face of danger we behave more cooperatively. Such a thing will not happen in climate policy, because it will always remain questionable whether a specific event like a flood is a climate phenomenon. But there is always the risk that individual rationality leads to collective stupidity. Therefore, one cannot solve the climate problem alone, but it has to be linked to other problems. There must be penalties and incentives: global CO 2-tariffs and technology transfer.

Just recently we have had the Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Barack Obama teaming up with George Soros to call for global carbon taxes. We had Obama endorsing global taxes on the eve of a UN summit, and as a Senator he introduced a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which commits the nations of the world to supporting “innovative financing mechanisms” (global taxes) to supplement foreign aid spending. Obama ally and supporter Richard Trumka the AFL-CIO president is working with European socialists to enact a global financial transaction tax.

Five subcommittee chairman in the US House of Representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to support the global climate tax to be proposed in the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Cancun Mexico. The Hill reports that the letter stated:

“A new global climate fund designed within the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] with the expertise, independence, and mandate to support developing countries in their efforts to build resilience to climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions is a crucial component of addressing the global problem,” it states.

[The] letter from Reps. Eni F.H. Faleomavaega (American Samoa), Brad Sherman (Calif.), Gary Ackerman (N.Y.), Donald Payne (N.J.) and Eliot Engel (N.Y.).

And they don’t really even need congress to make it happen. As we pointed out in a previous editorial the framework for global carbon trading and associated ‘fees’ is already passed in the financial reform monstrosity known as the Dodd-Frank bill:

On page 1,012 Section 750 ‘STUDY ON OVERSIGHT OF CARBON MARKETS’ the bill establishes an ‘INTERAGENCY WORKING GROUP’ which includes the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as Chairman of the group, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Treasury, Chairman of the SEC, Administrator of the EPA, Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Commissioner of the FTC, and the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration.

The group ‘ shall conduct a study on the oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets to ensure an efficient, secure and transparent carbon market‘.

Section 751 creates the ‘ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETS ADVISORY COMMITTEE’ and makes said committee not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act which says ‘the function of advisory committees should be advisory only, and that all matters under their consideration should be determined, in accordance with law, by the official, agency, or officer involved’ and includes other public safe guards which can be ignored by this committee.

Global regulation and ‘fees’ are also set up in the bill. Section 752 ‘INTERNATIONAL HARMONIZATION’ requires the the Commodity Futures Trading commission, the SEC, and the prudential regulators (as that term is defined in section 1a(39) of the Commodity Exchange Act) to ‘consult and coordinate with foreign regulatory authorities on the establishment of consistent international standards with respect to the regulation (including fees) of swaps, security-based swaps, swap entities, and security-based swap entities and may agree to such information-sharing arrangements as may be deemed to be necessary or appropriate’.

Read the bill here

So be prepared for more money to be taken from the American people with or without congressional approval.

There are many, many people like Professor of ‘Economics of Climate Change’ Edenhofer who have their whole sustenance, purpose and being wrapped up in the climate scam. There are trillions of dollars at stake and thousands of people want a piece of the action.

Flashback: Derivatives Bill Calls for U.S. Carbon Market Study

2300 damn pages! Someone shoved it in there, buried it. I don't care how many safeguards the politicos put in place, the traders are smarter and more creative. Before it imploded, Lehman Brothers, a bunch of thieving whores from the top down, was one of the prime cheerleaders of cap & trade and a member of USCAP. If you think you are going to corral Goldman in this most artificial of markets you're "420". - Derivatives bill calls for US carbon market study, Climateer Investing, April 23, 2010

In Washington, there's a code phrase for the middle ground that lawmakers find after a torrent of industry lobbying or partisan debate: "Let's do a study." The Wall Street reform bill may be the most extreme example: The financial reform legislation, which could become law later this month, orders government officials to conduct some 68 studies, according to a CNNMoney analysis. The bill also studies, among other things: short selling, reverse mortgages, improved insurance regulation, private student loans, oversight of carbon markets and the "feasibility of requiring use of standardized algorithmic descriptions for financial derivatives." - Congress Fixes Wall Street - and Orders up 68 Studies, CNNMoney.com, July 6, 2010

Reuters
April 22, 2010

A tough new proposal to regulate U.S. markets calls for top regulators and government officials to conduct a study on transparency in emerging U.S. carbon markets as part of the financial reform package.

The heads of the Treasury Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other U.S. agencies would be required to study oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets, according to the proposal, part of a bill passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee this week.

The goal of the study is "to ensure an efficient, secure, and transparent carbon market, including oversight of spot markets and derivative markets," the bill said.

Senator Blanche Lincoln's Agriculture Committee voted to advance the bill this week. It will be merged with the Senate Banking Committee's financial reform package, expected to be debated next week, which will likely include a crackdown on the unregulated $450 trillion derivatives market.

Emerging carbon markets are either voluntary or regional because the U.S. government does not limit emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet, considered a requirement before the launch of a national market.

Ten states in the U.S. Northeast operate a carbon market on power plants. In addition, the Chicago Climate Exchange CLIE.L also runs voluntary carbon markets.

Some critics of carbon markets say that not all of the credits that are traded in them represent true emissions reductions.

Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, Lindsey Graham, a Republican and Joe Lieberman, an independent, hope to unveil a climate bill on Monday that is expected to include a carbon market on power plants beginning in 2012, which could be expanded to the manufacturers years later.

Other agency officials required to participate in the study would be the heads of the Agriculture Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Energy Information Administration, the independent statistics arm of the Department of Energy.

The interagency group would be required to submit a report to Congress on their study within six months after the report becomes law.

What Do You Think of Carbon Regulation and 'International Harmonization' Being in the Financial Reform Bill?

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Cap and Trade was dropped because it was included in H.R.4173 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Also, other nations will have a say on how we run our nation when it comes to carbon regulation and we must share info with them.

Here is a sample below but I suggest you download the bill and read for yourself.

HR4173 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Sec.750-752.

SEC. 750. STUDY ON OVERSIGHT OF CARBON MARKETS. (e) REPORT.

Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the interagency group (see page 1013) shall submit to Congress a report on the results of the study conducted under subsection (b), including recommendations for the oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets to ensure an efficient, secure, and transparent carbon market, including oversight of spot markets and derivative markets.

SEC. 752. INTERNATIONAL HARMONIZATION.

(a) In order to promote effective and consistent global regulation of swaps and security-based swaps, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the prudential regulators (as that term is defined in section 1a(39) of the Commodity Exchange Act), as appropriate, shall consult and coordinate with foreign regulatory authorities on the establishment of consistent international standards with respect to the regulation (including fees) of swaps, security-based swaps, swap entities, and security-based swap entities and may agree to such information-sharing arrangements as may be deemed to be necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors, swap counter parties, and security-based swap counterparties.

(b) In order to promote effective and consistent global regulation of contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery and options on such contracts, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shall consult and coordinate with foreign regulatory authorities on the establishment of consistent international standards with respect to the regulation of contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery and options on such contracts, and may agree to such information-sharing arrangements as may be deemed necessary or appropriate in the public interest for the protection of users of contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery.

Carbon Market Oversight Study Released by Interagency Group

Carbon Capitalist
January 31, 2011

With the advent of the financial crisis which was caused by bad practices in the housing market, many people — especially politicians in Washington — have expressed their concern that a trading scheme for carbon emissions would be subject to the same type of behavior without significant oversight.

As part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed last year in response to the financial crisis, Congress mandated the formation of a Working Group to “conduct a study on the oversight of existing and prospective carbon markets to ensure efficient, secure, and transparent carbon markets, including oversight of spot markets and derivative markets.”

Headed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the working group was comprised of a number of different federal agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). After a number of months of deliberation, the Working Group delivered its findings to the Speaker of the House of Representatives in a document entitled Report on the Oversight of Existing and Prospective Carbon Markets. In their effort to conduct a thorough study, the Working Group solicited public comments from exchanges, clearinghouses, and other carbon market participants on top of doing their own extensive research.

The primary objectives of carbon market oversight highlighted in the study are as follows:

• Facilitate and protect price discovery in the carbon markets.
• Ensure appropriate levels of carbon market transparency.
• Allow for appropriate, broad market participation.
• Prevent manipulation, fraud and other market abuses.

In order to achieve these objectives, the study recommends a number of steps that should be taken in establishing robust oversight of the emerging primary, secondary and derivative carbon markets. In regards to derivative markets specifically, the new regulations laid out by the Dodd-Frank Act will play a major role moving forward. At the same time, the Working Group emphasized the important role that Wall Street plays in creating an efficient carbon market including the use of derivatives.

Much of the oversight that is needed for carbon markets depends on the design features of the program in question as made clear in the study. With the fraudulent and illegal activity that has plagued the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) especially in recent weeks, it will certainly be interesting to see how carbon market security and oversight in the United States will learn from these lessons by our counterparts across the pond.

Financial Market Reform and the Implications for Carbon Trading (Executive Summary)

Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University
January 2011

Concerns about regulating carbon markets became an increasingly integral part of the climate policy debate in the aftermath of recent episodes of market abuse and failure. In the absence of an existing comprehensive system of market oversight for carbon trading, policymakers drafting market-based climate legislation started including a range of market oversight provisions to help ensure that a new market, potentially valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year, would function properly.

President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the “Dodd-Frank Act”) on July 21, 2010, while the effort to enact a federal cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stalled in the U.S. Senate. The new law will significantly expand regulation of financial market activity, including transactions associated with existing emissions trading markets.

The law will also presumably apply to financial market activity associated with any future federal carbon market, as well as carbon markets under development by the State of California and the Western Climate Initiative—an economy-wide cap-and-trade system comprised of seven U.S. states and four Canadian provinces, scheduled to begin operation in 2012.

This paper provides an overview of the concerns raised and regulatory proposals put forward in the federal climate debate, and by regulators designing the Western Climate Initiative, regarding the financial market activity associated with carbon trading, and examines whether and how the Dodd-Frank Act addresses these concerns.

The oversight measures in various cap-and-trade proposals vary, with some climate bills creating general standards for market regulation and others including specific requirements regarding what instruments may trade, where trading may occur, and who may participate in the marketplace. In general, market oversight proposals became more restrictive as the climate debate progressed in the 110th and 111th Congresses...

Carbon Credits – Creating a Market Out of Thin Air

The Climate Change Control Bill strongly supported by Obama calls for an international governing regime to monitor and regulate carbon dioxide and ‘carbon footprints’ from discovery, to production, to consumption at a cost of $50 trillion globally and at a cost of $8 trillion for US taxpayers, all to be paid for by a global tax, whose monies will be used to establish a world government body. - Patrick Briley, Brezinski: Obama's Globalist ‘Rasputin’, NewsWithViews.com, September 16, 2008

How to Create Trillions of Dollars Out of Hot Air

By sannyasinman, HubPages.com
March 2010

Carbon Offset Credits - The Financial Scam of the Century

Can you think of a product that contains nothing, that does nothing, that has been created out of thin air, that does not work, is based upon a lie, and governments and companies around the world are willing to pay through the nose for? Welcome to the world of carbon credits, the trillion dollar confidence trick.

Everything about Carbon Credit Trading is virtual, non-existent, imaginary, except the billions of dollars to be made from the trades. That is very real and explains why there is a stampede amongst the greedy banks and financial institutions to get a piece of the action, and probably nobody stands to make more money from this fictitious, figment of the imagination than Mr Altruism himself, Mr “save the planet” Gore.

Let’s take a look under the covers of the Carbon Credit Trading scam.

1. Firstly, there is considerable doubt amongst scientists that there is global warming at all. Many scientists in fact think that the earth is actually cooling. As one climatologist said, "it is anybody’s guess. Next year might be warmer, or it might be cooler. In ten years time, there is just as much chance that the earth will be warmer, as that it will be cooler. We simply do not know." This is the most sensible thing I have heard so far about global warming.


2. Secondly, even if there were global warming, there is no real proof that it is caused by carbon emissions. There have been times in the past when there was many, many times the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to today, and the earth was cooler, not warmer. In fact there is considerable evidence that increased volume of CO2 is a consequence of global warming, not the cause. The most plausible explanation for global warming is that it is caused by the activity of the sun, and there is much empirical and scientific evidence to support this.


3. Thirdly, even if there were global warming, and even if it was caused by carbon emissions, Carbon Credit Trading will do nothing to help either reduce the emissions, or to help save the planet. Rich companies and countries can still put as much CO2 into the atmosphere as they like (even increase it) as long as they can pay for the privilege. Rich countries will buy the right to pollute the earth from developing countries who cannot afford (Africa for example) to pollute the earth as much. This is whole idea is absolute lunacy.

Carbon Credits - An Imaginary Commodity

What’s more, CO2 is not even a pollutant! It is occurs naturally, and is essential for healthy tree and plant growth. Every time we exhale, we breathe out CO2, so perhaps we should all be taxed on our breathing? Do you see the utter nonsense of all of this?

And there’s more. Although carbon offsets are often presented as emissions reductions, they do not actually reduce emissions. At best, they move reductions to where it is cheapest to make them, which normally means a shift from Northern to Southern hemisphere countries. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to be made at one location on the assumption that an equivalent saving will happen elsewhere, but in actual fact, this usually does not happen, and so there is often a net increase in emissions.

Carbon offsets are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened. Moreover, according to David Victor, a carbon trading analyst at Stanford University, two-thirds of the supposed “emission reduction” credits from the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) are not making real reductions in CO2 emissions at all. The companies behind these carbon offset projects are paid to do what they would have done anyway, while the companies who buy the credits in industrialised nations are free to exceed their emissions cap. In other words, this is a license, if you can afford it, to pollute the planet even more!

In theory, the money you pay to the carbon credit company goes towards a “green” project which will offset what they call your “carbon footprint.” One company eager to ease my conscience and take my money to fund a “green project” is http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/. Did you see the title? Would you honestly trust a bank, and JP Morgan bank at that, to care for the planet on your behalf?

This is just one example, but shows that the people behind this scam are not altruistic environmentalists. They are financiers, investment banks and hedge funds. There is already a Carbon Credit Futures market, carbon credit trading exchanges in European (ECX) and in Chicago (CCX), and carbon credit derivatives products. Sound familiar?

“Obama years ago helped fund carbon program he is now pushing through Congress” is a FOXNews story by Ed Barnes. In short, “while on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president.” The charity was the Joyce Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were “instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” - Obama’s Involvement in Chicago Climate Exchange, Canada Free Press, March 29, 2009

This is all about creating billions of dollars, quite literally out of thin air, based up on a hoax, sold to us by world luminaries and super salesmen like Al Gore, who of course has invested heavily in all things to do with climate change, and is flying around the world in his private jet, peddling his wares. He is set to become the world’s first carbon billionaire, and if the “business” of carbon trading continues expanding, there will be many more to follow.

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/blood-and-gore-the-nickname-for-al-gores-carbon-trading-firm-that-is-poised-to-make-billions-of-dollars-from-carbon-credits

The Carbon Offset Credit Billionaires

You see, Al Gore is chairman of Generation Investment Management (GIM). David Blood, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is the CEO. But the bottom line is that GIM is about making money. GIM owns a 10 percent stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange, and the Chicago Climate Exchange owns half of the European Climate Exchange. So, if the United States and Europe adopt a government enforced "cap and trade" carbon credit trading scheme Al Gore and his fellow investors will rake in billions of dollars.

Doesn’t it make you stop and think? If Al Gore wants to save the planet, how much of his time and energy does he spend on projects which are vital to the earth, but where there is no prestige (Nobel Peace Prize, Oscar) or money to be made for him personally? How many would you guess?

The global market for carbon credits could reach €2 trillion by 2020 ($3.2 trillion U.S. dollars) from about €46 billion ($72 billion) this year (2010), and it is all, quite literally, based upon nothing but hot air.

Wake up people! The global warming scare is the greatest scientific fraud in the history of mankind, and its associated carbon credit trading scam is the greatest hustle. Is there anything more important today, than to expose these swindles for what they are, and put a stop to them?

Q. How do you create a Global Warming panic when the weather is not cooperating?

Answer: http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mos/mos_162globalwarming.html

The Copenhagen summit achieved its main aim, to maintain the carbon-trading system established by the Kyoto Protocol, says Christopher Booker

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6845686/Copenhagen-accord-keeps-Big-Carbon-in-business.html

The great carbon credit swindle

http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/issues/0901/carbon-swindle-0901.cfm

The Kyoto protocol allows rich countries to meet their greenhouse gas reduction commitments by investing in projects abroad. But research shows that many of these projects would have happened anyway.

http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2416330.ece/Opinion_Carbon_credits_are_a_big_swindle





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What Is Carbon Credit?

• Size of global carbon credit market: Approximately $60 billion
• Amount of C02 the United States traded in 2007: Nearly 23 million metric tons
• Amount of C02 the EU traded in 2007: More than 1.6 billion metric tons

Emissions trading is on track to play a key role in the world's transition to a low-carbon economy. As countries meet their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, the global carbon market has experienced rapid growth. From 2005 to 2008, the market grew from $11 billion to $126 billion. - The Global Carbon Market Grew from $11 Billion in 2005 to $126 Billion in 2008, May 17, 2010

By Jessica Stillman, BNet
Originally Published on February 7, 2008

In step with the dramatic rise in C02 emissions and other pollutants in recent years, a variety of new financial markets have emerged, offering businesses key incentives — aside from taxes and other punitive measures — to slow down overall emissions growth and, ideally, global warming itself.

A key feature of these markets is emissions trading, or cap-and-trade schemes, which allow companies to buy or sell “credits” that collectively bind all participating companies to an overall emissions limit. While markets operate for specific pollutants such as greenhouse gases and acid rain, by far the biggest emissions market is for carbon. In 2007, the trade market for C02 credits hit $60 billion worldwide — almost double the amount from 2006.

How It Works

Emissions limits and trading rules vary country by country, so each emissions-trading market operates differently. For nations that have signed the Kyoto Protocol, which holds each country to its own C02 limit, greenhouse gas-emissions trading is mandatory. In the United States, which did not sign the environmental agreement, corporate participation is voluntary for emissions schemes such as the Chicago Climate Exchange. Yet a few general principles apply to each type of market.

1. Under a basic cap-and-trade scheme, if a company’s carbon emissions fall below a set allowance, that company can sell the difference — in the form of credits — to other companies that exceed their limits.
2. Another fast-growing voluntary model is carbon offsets. In this global market, a set of middlemen companies, called offset firms, estimate a company’s emissions and then act as brokers by offering opportunities to invest in carbon-reducing projects around the world. Unlike carbon trading, offsetting isn’t yet government regulated in most countries; it’s up to buyers to verify a project’s environmental worth. In theory, for every ton of C02 emitted, a company can buy certificates attesting that the same amount of greenhouse gas was removed from the atmosphere through renewable energy projects such as tree planting.

Why It Matters Now

Industry watchers say carbon markets will continue to grow at a fast clip — especially in the United States, where Fortune 500 powerhouses such as DuPont, Ford, and IBM are voluntarily capping and trading their emissions. Even though a national cap on carbon emissions doesn’t yet exist in the United States, most consider it inevitable, and legislators are already pushing the issue in Congress.

It’s not just governments who are demanding emissions compliance — consumers want it, too. The commitment a company makes to curb its pollutant output is an increasingly public aspect of strategy. More and more employees are taking these factors into account when deciding where to work. A recent study from MonsterTRAK found that 80 percent of young professionals want their work to impact the environment in a positive way, and 92 percent prefer to work for an environmentally friendly company.

Why It Matters to You

Let’s say a company can’t afford to modify its operations to reduce C02. Purchasing carbon credits or offsets buys it time to figure out how to operate within C02 limits. For others, it can be a cost-effective tool to help lower emissions while earning public praise for the effort. Each credit a company buys on the Chicago Climate Exchange — usually for about $2 — means another company will remove the equivalent of one metric ton of carbon.

The Advantages

Companies in different industries face dramatically different costs to lower their emissions. A market-based approach allows companies to take carbon-reducing measures that everyone can afford. “The private sector is better at developing diversified approaches to manage the costs and risks [of reducing emissions],” says Jesse Fahnestock, spokesman at Swedish power company Vattenfall, which is a member of a global Combat Climate Change coalition.

Reducing emissions and lowering energy consumption is usually good for the core business. For example, in 1997 British energy company BP committed to bring its emissions down to 10 percent below 1990 levels. After taking simple steps like tightening valves, changing light bulbs, and improving operations efficiency, BP implemented an internal cap-and-trade scheme and met its emissions goal by the end of 2001 — nine years ahead of schedule. Using the combined C02 reduction strategy, BP reported saving about $650 million.

Then there’s the long-term investment angle: Buying into the carbon market boom now suggests significant dividends later on. Carbon credits are relatively cheap now, but their value will likely rise, giving companies another reason to participate.

The Disadvantages

As with any financial market, emissions traders are vulnerable to significant risk and volatility. The EU’s trading scheme (EU-ETS), for instance, issued so many permits between 2005 and 2007 that it flooded the market. Supply soared and carbon prices bottomed out, removing incentives for companies to trade. Enforcement of trading rules can be just as unpredictable, though Fahnestock says the EU is working to correct the problems.

Carbon offsets have their own drawbacks, which reflect a fast-growing and unregulated market. Some offset firms in the United States and abroad have been caught selling offsets for normal operations that do not actually take any additional C02 out of the atmosphere, such as pumping C02 into oil wells to force out the remaining crude. In 2008 the Climate Group, the International Emissions Trading Association, and the World Economic Forum will work to develop a Voluntary Carbon Standard to verify that offsetting projects are beyond business-as-usual and have lasting environmental value.

The lack of offset regulations has also made marketing problematic. Recently, companies have taken to declaring themselves “carbon neutral.” But until the Federal Trade Commission determines the guidelines for such terms, it’s unclear which companies actually merit the distinction. Already Vail Resorts, the organizers of the Academy Awards, and other organizations have taken heat for touting their investments in carbon offset projects that were not entirely environmentally sound.

Key Players

Bank of America is a leader in carbon-reduction strategies. The bank recently launched a $20 billion, 10-year initiative to finance emission-reduction projects, invest in green technology, and facilitate carbon-credit trading.

BP is among the most well-known companies to implement an internal cap-and-trade system. The company assigned its 150 units an emissions quota and allowed them to buy and sell carbon credits among themselves.

The European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the mandatory cap-and-trade program for the EU.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is a U.S. carbon-trading scheme in which companies make a voluntary but legally binding commitment to meet emissions targets.

How to Talk About It

Cap-and-trade scheme: A market approach to reducing greenhouse gases that works by setting emissions targets. Governments or businesses that reduce their carbon outputs in excess of the target can sell the difference to those who produce more than the limit. This is the favored solution of many business groups.

MACs: Marginal abatement costs refer to the cost of cutting C02 emission, which varies from country to country and industry to industry.

Free-market environmentalism: This theory holds that the free market, which offers economic incentives, is the best tool to address global warming. This view goes against the traditional approach to environmentalism, which looks to government regulation to prevent environmental destruction.

The Combat Climate Change Roadmap - the 3C Initiative’s recommendations to political leaders
Getting Ahead of the Curve: Corporate Strategies That Address Climate Change, a report of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Industry Caught in Carbon ‘Smokescreen’ - Financial Times, April 25, 2007, on the problems with carbon offsetting
A Green Employment Tax Swap: Using a Carbon Tax to Finance Payroll Tax Relief - Gilbert Metcalf discusses the advantages of a revenue-neutral carbon tax
Another Inconvenient Truth - BusinessWeek, March 26, 2007, on carbon-offset deals that don’t deliver what they promise
Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy? - August Review, January 26, 2010
Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth. Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave.
The People vs. Cap‐and‐Tax

Give Everyone an Individual Carbon Allowance and Let the Dealing Begin

Government Agencies Would Need $16.6 Billion in New Tax Revenue to Buy Carbon Allowances Under Global Warming Legislation

$16.6 Billion Needed to Purchase Carbon Allowances If Cap-and-Trade -- to Allegedly Combat Global Warming -- is Enacted into Law

CNSNews.com
August 26, 2009

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study says that all levels of government –- federal, state, and local -- will have to come up with a total of $16.6 billion in additional revenue to purchase carbon allowances, if cap-and-trade -- to allegedly combat global warming -- is enacted into law. Experts say this could prompt increases in taxes.

This is the second government report to estimate that the proposed climate-change legislation, formally known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, will eventually cost consumers more.

A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study published on June 19 revealed that the House cap-and-trade bill, passed by a 219 to 212 vote on June 26, would cost an estimated $175 per household every year. Cost estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on cap-and-trade legislation are lower -- at $80 to $111 per household.

The cap-and-trade bill, in general, places limits (a cap) on how much carbon and greenhouse gases companies can emit. If they exceed that limit, they can purchase (“trade”) carbon credits to compensate for their over-emissions.

John Stephenson, director of natural resources and environment for the GAO, in written testimony for an Aug. 4 Senate Finance Committee hearing, said that state, local, and federal governments would be financially liable if cap-and-trade is imposed.

Stephenson testified about the GAO’s assessment of how emission-allowances and revenues produced by a cap-and-trade measure should be allocated.

“According to one study, governments produce approximately 13 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, and the allowance consumption associated with these emissions could cost governments an additional $16.6 billion,” Stephenson said.

Brian Johnson, federal affairs manager for Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a free market policy group, explained that state governments may have to raise their tax rates to buy carbon permits.

“In order for the states to raise this money [for carbon allowances], they’re going to have to increase utility costs and/or just increase direct taxes on their citizens,” Johnson told CNSNews.com. “There’s going to be no way to raise these funds without doing that.”

“You’ve got something like 36 states that get 80 percent or more of their energy from carbon-based sources, so they’re going to be really hit by something like this in order to have the proper allowances,” he said. “I mean, they’ll necessarily have to raise taxes. I don’t see any way around it.”

Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute (Cato Institute) Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, agreed with Johnson that state taxes would be raised to generate funding for carbon allowances, adding that states are “generally” constitutionally bound to “balanced budget requirements.”

“They can’t borrow as freely as the federal government can,” he said. “They can borrow some, there are ways around these balanced budget requirements. But, generally speaking, they have to tax what they spend.”

Adele Morris, policy director of the climate and energy project at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington, D.C., told CNSNews.com that to cover high energy costs the federal government would potentially have to appropriate additional funds.

“It’s possible that, yes, the government would have to have some kind of appropriations in order to buy [allowances],” Morris said.

“Even if they don’t buy allowances, it’s [climate-change legislation] going to include higher costs,” she said. “So it’s going to have [to have] appropriations to fund those higher costs.”

The higher costs that result from the climate legislation are going to affect all levels of governments, she explained.

“The government is a big user of energy and that means everything from our fleet vehicles and the fuel they use to the heating and lighting of buildings that the government uses,” Morris told CNSNew.com.

“In those expenditures, part of the carbon price is going to be passed along to the government, just like it would any other enterprise, and that’s going to be across-the-board in all federal government activities -- and not just the federal government for that matter, it is going to be state and local governments as well,” she said.

Morris said one option for governments -- especially the federal government -- faced with the question of how to raise revenue to offset energy costs might be to raise deficits.

“One option is to raise revenue, another option is to cut spending, another option is to raise debt,” said Morris.

However, she also said: “One important reaction would be to conserve energy and that would be to invest in more energy-efficient buildings, lighting, and vehicle fleets and I think that’s a very important response from governments.”

Currently, lawmakers are considering either auctioning the allowances, handing them out for free, or a combination of both (free and purchased). The House bill initially gives away most of the allowances and would sell just a few of them, which could result in revenue shortfall, according to Johnson.

“If they allocate the free allowances, that’s just cap-and-cap -- you know, there’s no trade there,” explained ATR’s Johnson. “There’s no economic driver and the government wants to be able to set the market and set the price for these.”

In his written testimony, Stephenson suggested that auctioning permits would generate the most revenue, which could be used to off-set costs for the federal government, among other things.

“Given the revenue generation potential of auctions, many experts we consulted as part of a prior study suggested that a cap-and-trade program should maximize the level of auctioning,” said Stephenson.

However, according to Jerry Taylor, offset-cost benefits posed by selling carbon permits would only be felt at the federal level, isolating state and local governments.

“The sales of the permits will be done by the federal government,” Taylor said. “So if you’re talking what state and local government would have to spend, that would not be offset by any permit sales because the permit sales aren’t being conducted by state and local governments, [they are] being conducted by the federal government, unless the revenues were recycled back to state and local governments somehow, which would not be in the House bill.”

Stephenson of the GAO said:

“Placing a price on emissions is likely to raise the cost of production of many goods and services. The size of the impact will depend on the price of allowances, as well as the ability of producers to substitute less emission-intensive processes and inputs.”

In June, the CBO revealed that the cap-and-trade bill would generate $45 billion by 2019 in revenues if a portion of the allowances were auctioned. Annual revenues from allowances could reach between $30 billion and $300 billion by about the same year, according to earlier CBO estimates.

Unless the climate bill exempts governments from having to buy allowances, state, local, and federal governments will need $16.6 billion to buy permits.

“The $16.6 billion figure that you mention was provided to illustrate the effects of a cap-and-trade program on government expenditures,” Stephenson told CNSNews.com in an e-mail ...

Rationing in Our Future?

Red Dirt Report
November 29, 2010

On a recent visit to England, an evening in the hotel room found me flipping channels. To say much of British television is awful would be an understatement. However, one program caught my attention — the BBC reality program Turn Back Time: The High Street.

The premise of the program is that a group of shopkeepers and their families on High Street in the historic English market town of Shepton Mallet, Somerset, are instructed to run their businesses — grocer, butcher, blacksmith, etc. — as they would have under the circumstances of their particular time in history.

In the episode I watched the time period was World War II, when times were hard for many Britons and citizens had to make do with whatever they happened to have or could afford. It was also a time of austerity, as the Shepton Mallet families soon discover.

Air raids, food shortages and annoyed customers were common throughout the program. The grocer even offered certain customers black market goods, undermining the "community spirit" approach that developed during those times of hardship, woe and want.

The program struck me, I suppose, because of all the talk these days of austerity, of "sacrifice" and such. British newspapers like The Independent were noting that the climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, is incredibly important, but that most nations won't do enough to save the smaller, poorer nations that will be adversely affected by so-called climate change.

And in today's edition of The Daily Telegraph (article above), it notes that a professor named Kevin Anderson is actually calling for a "halt (to) economic growth in the rich world over the next 20 years." It continues, noting that:

"(T)his would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less 'carbon intensive' goods and services such as long-haul flights and fuel-hungry cars."

But the part that really caught my attention in regards to Prof. Anderson's insane rantings about austerity was this:

"(Anderson) said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the 'last time of crisis' in the 1930s and 40s."

Nineteen thirties and forties, eh? Just as BBC viewers witnessed on the Turn Back Time program. Coincidence?

Said Anderson in the Telegraph:

"The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale do the problem we face."

Now, Prof. Anderson reassures readers that he doesn't expect people to "go back to living in caves," but we do need to wear sweaters more often, rather than turning up the heat in your home." It's starting to feel like the 1970's all over again, isn't it?

As Steve Watson, writing an article for PrisonPlanet.com, noted:

A group called the Royal Society, an "ultra-elitist environmental group," wants the first world to stave off alleged rising global temperatures by adhering "to a system of rationing." This Royal Society group is part of a the global-warming cult that wants drastic cuts in CO2 emissions, even it means folks have to endure austerity and rationing at levels never before seen in modern times.

Meanwhile, greenie globalist do-gooders like U2's Bono and Al Gore are jetting around the world, wagging their fingers and telling people to reduce their "carbon footprint" while they live well, and preach down to everyone for driving an SUV or using certain sorts of light bulbs. As someone who caught U2's performance in 2009 in Norman, Okla., as part of the 360 Degrees Tour, the set was enormous and as Andrew Bolt of Melbourne, Australia's Herald Sun newspaper noted:

"U2's 360 Degrees Tour, the most expensive rock spectacle ever, is here. The tour, with a daily running cost of $850,000, arrived on six 747 jets ..."

And back to my trip to the UK — there was a lot of grumbling about the serious financial challenges facing Ireland and the fact that Britain will have to help them out financially. Yeah, the European Union finance ministers have approved the bailout of Ireland, and the Irish people are mad and protesting, just as they are in Greece and other European countries.

If a country like Ireland can fall so quickly, what lies ahead for Britain and America, for that matter?

While in the United Kingdom, young protesters — students, mostly — were occupying buildings, like Oxford's Radcliffe Camera, or in London, smashing police vans or causing low-level mayhem, protesting the planned cuts in education funding and higher student fees. While walking the streets of Oxford this past week, it was clear that the students were not happy about these recent developments, some holding signs, much as their parents — and even grandparents — had in the 1960's and 70's. One British columnist called these students part of "Generation Scared," where these younger people won't enjoy what their older siblings, parents and grandparents got to enjoy before everything started going to hell, as it were.

Will we have to revert to the kind of rationing and austere conditions that the WWII generation faced?

Is this all an engineered collapse that will bring about some sort of dystopian nightmare on a global scale?

Between the recent TSA protests in the U.S., student uprisings in Britain, collapsing economies, the war-like footing on the Korean peninsula, and an increasingly smug China and Russia, the "grand chessboard," as the globalists like to say, is looking pretty active and more uncertain. Of course, most of us are the "pawns," and we all know what usually happens to the pawns in the game of chess.

Cancun Climate Change Summit: Scientists Call for WWII-type Rationing in the Developed World

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are saying that "the Second World War and the concept of rationing (in rich countries) is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face" to bring down carbon emissions.

Daily Telegraph
November 29, 2010

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.

As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain, as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars.

Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods. He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.

This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights, and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited as well as goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.

“The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said.

Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.

“I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.”

The last round of talks in Copenhagen last year ended in a weak political accord to keep temperature rise below the dangerous tipping point of 2C(3.6F). This time 194 countries are meeting again to try and make the deal legally binding and agree to targets on cutting emissions. At the moment, efforts are focused on trying to get countries to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 relative to 1990 levels.

But Dr Myles Allen, of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, said this might not be enough. He said that if emissions do not come down quick enough even a slight change in temperature will be too rapid for ecosystems to keep up. Also, by measuring emissions relative to a particular baseline, rather than putting a limit on the total amount that can ever be pumped into the atmosphere, there is a danger that the limit is exceeded.

“Peak warming is determined by the total amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, not the rate we release it in any given year,’ he said. “Dangerous climate change, however, also depends on how fast the planet is warming up, not just how hot it gets, and the maximum rate of warming does depend on the maximum emission rate. It’s not just how much we emit, but how fast we do so.”

Brother, Can You Spare a Carbon Credit?

Thinkers weigh a radical new way to reduce greenhouse gas: Give everyone an individual carbon allowance, and let the dealing begin.

By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The Boston Globe
Originally Published on February 24, 2008

Global Warming is a planet-sized problem, so policy solutions tend to aim for the grandest possible scale. The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions at a national level, while laws in various countries and states seek to reform entire industries.

For individuals, the picture is very different. Environmentalism often boils down to small lifestyle choices, like turning down the thermostat and screwing in the squiggly light bulbs - gestures that can feel virtuous but futile. Some environmentalists even consider them counterproductive if they substitute for activism.

But a new wave of thinking suggests it may be better in the long run to address this global problem in a way that directly involves individuals. Several proposals generating buzz chiefly in the United Kingdom and Ireland operate on the notion that every individual has an equal stake in the atmosphere. The most provocative idea, personal carbon trading, would grant all residents a "carbon allowance," setting a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from their households and transportation. In the model of the industrial "cap and trade" system, guzzlers who exceeded their allowance would need to buy extra shares. People who conserved energy, meanwhile, could sell their leftover shares and ride their bikes all the way to the bank.


Personal carbon allowances set a limit on the emissions that can be produced by an individual's activities.

This is not just a fantasy floating around in the greenest reaches of the blogosphere. In 2006, the UK's environment secretary, David Miliband, endorsed the idea, and the British government has commissioned a study to explore the policy's feasibility. An alternative proposal, known as "cap and share," is under consideration by the Irish government, and Peter Barnes, an American entrepreneur, promotes a kindred scheme in his new book, "Climate Solutions."

The collective impact of individual energy use is enormous, so any effective approach to climate change will ultimately require major changes in individual behavior. The most broadly accepted estimate is that direct emissions from individuals -- that is, residences and transportation -- account for 30 to 40 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in both the United States and the UK. The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that the average American is responsible for the emission of about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

"Climate change is a problem that's far too complex for existing economic models to deal with," says Matt Prescott, project director of Carbon Limited, a program in the UK that is researching the idea of personal carbon trading. Individuals, whose emissions "have been skyrocketing," play a key role, says Prescott. "When you put your foot on the accelerator, there's no blaming Ford."

Engaging individuals directly could have a groundbreaking impact, alerting them to their contribution to the problem while enlisting them in solving it. There are substantial differences among these policies, and practical and political obstacles to implementing any of them, especially in the United States. Some believe a tax, aptly applied, could accomplish the same goals more efficiently. But advocates see these plans as a necessary shift in the way we think about pumping carbon into the air -- infusing the global energy debate with a deeply personal sense of rights and responsibilities.

Carbon dioxide is an inevitable byproduct of most modern human activities. Beginning with the industrial revolution, we have been spewing it into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, along with other gases that trap heat from the sun. (Carbon dioxide makes up over 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; "carbon" seems to have become shorthand for all of them.) A solidifying consensus has it that in order to avert catastrophic climate change, we must slash greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Fledgling efforts to control carbon emissions have generally taken three forms.

1. One is to set simple limits, such as the 2004 California law that attempted to regulate tailpipe emissions from vehicles. (The law has been blocked by the EPA in a decision now under appeal.)


2. Another approach is making them expensive by taxing some or all fossil fuel sales. A few countries, such as Britain and Finland, have passed carbon tax laws, as have Boulder, Colo., and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and British Columbia.


3. The third category consists of cap-and-trade systems, a sort of cross between the first two that uses market mechanisms to discourage emissions. A limit is imposed, but players can exceed it for a price, and the energy-efficient can benefit by selling their surplus. The Kyoto Protocol involves such a mechanism, and the European Union has its own emissions trading scheme that allows businesses in member countries to trade emissions rights. And the trend has begun to catch on in the US Congress, where several current bills would implement an industrial cap-and-trade system.

In 1996, British policy analyst David Fleming, director of the research center the Lean Economy Connection, thought of a twist on this approach: What if, in addition to nations and corporations, we applied these rules to people? Under his plan, an independent committee would set a cap for total emissions for all of Britain. Forty percent of this cap would be allocated to individuals, free, with everyone receiving the same share. The rest would be allotted to businesses and government, which would have to pay for their shares. To rein in emissions, the total cap would be incrementally lowered each year.

Fleming and others imagine a system that reaches deeply into how people live -- and how they think about their lifestyles.

Under such a system, you would have a personal carbon account that used the technology of credit and debit cards. When you bought gas or paid utility bills, the units would be deducted.

When you had to run errands, before hopping in the car, you would pause to consider taking the bus, or riding your bike, or calling up a friend to car pool. Vacationers deciding between Vermont and Colorado would have to weigh the relative carbon impact of driving and flying. To save up carbon units for the trip, they might have to turn down the air conditioner for a couple of weeks. Carbon costs would start to figure into such everyday decisions, until the calculus became automatic.

If you had carbon savings, you could use them next year, when the cap would be lower, or sell them on the carbon market.

One of the main attractions of this idea is its equity. The outsized carbon footprints of the wealthy -- those who fly by private jet and live in McMansions -- would come with an extra price tag, so the penalty would fall on the people most able to afford it. The poor, who generate much lower emissions, could actually turn a profit by selling their surplus.

As entrepreneurs and businesses adapted to this system, the development of alternative energy and energy-efficient appliances would take off. As you used more wind power and your car consumed less gasoline, you'd have a little more leeway with your carbon account. At the same time, though, every year the cap would tighten, cutting into your allowance, further spurring conservation and innovation.

"Getting Americans to find another way of living is going to be very difficult," says Fleming. His plan, he believes, would be a "guarantee to change their way of life and have a future."

Depending on your perspective, the notion of a personal carbon allowance may sound utopian or nightmarish. Meanwhile, there are other proposed schemes that may be easier for Americans to swallow. They share certain elements with that idea, but avoid the individual quota and place more emphasis on rights than responsibility.

In Ireland -- a country that recently made headlines with its dramatic success in reducing plastic bag use -- the government is considering a proposal called "cap and share." In the first stage, it would apply only to vehicle fuels, but the scope would eventually expand.

Under the plan, which could be adopted as soon as next December, an independent trust would set a cap for consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel, convert that figure into tons of carbon dioxide, and divide that number by the adult population of the country. Each adult would get a permit in the mail representing one share. Each company that imports vehicle fuel into Ireland would need to get its hands on those permits in order to sell its product.

"When you got your permit, you would have to decide what to do," says Richard Douthwaite, an Irish economist and founder of the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. "If you tore up the permit, you would be preventing that amount of vehicle fuel from being released."

But the more tempting, and no doubt more popular, option would be to sell the permit to a company, via the local bank or another broker.

By adding a cost to selling gas in Ireland, and by placing a limit on the total, the scheme would immediately cause fuel prices to rise, providing an incentive for people to drive less or to devise greener means of powering vehicles. But consumers would also be partly compensated for the higher cost of fuel through the sale of their permits.

A third proposal, which has support from some American environmentalists, is an idea called the "sky trust," first floated in 1999 by Peter Barnes, the American entrepreneur and a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute in California. In several books, including "Climate Solutions," Barnes conceives of the atmosphere as a common asset. He proposes that an independent board set a cap for total emissions and hold an auction for emissions rights. Companies would pay for the permits, and the resulting pot of cash would be divided equally among citizens.

His scheme is based on an existing American system, the Alaska Permanent Fund, founded in 1976 in response to a windfall from oil exports. Every year, a semi-independent corporation distributes the oil revenue among Alaskan residents.

Barnes calls this a "very interesting precedent -- this notion that if you have revenue from selling a common resource, of giving it back to everybody equally."

Although different in structure from personal carbon trading, the sky trust would similarly reward the carbon-thrifty.

"If you have a Hummer and three houses, you're going to be paying in a lot more than you get back," says Barnes. "If you ride a bicycle and take the bus, you'll get back more than you pay in."

According to Richard Starkey, who studies all three schemes at the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the UK, the main advantage of personal carbon trading over the second two ideas is that it might most effectively foster "carbon literacy," as consumers would be made aware of the exact cost in carbon for their decisions. It would also send a signal about acceptable levels of personal emissions. The minuses, however, would be the need for the card infrastructure, and, as Starkey puts it, the "Big Brother element."

David Fleming regards the second two schemes as "nonstarters" because they guarantee money rather than energy. As a result, they are unequipped to grapple with a second major concern of energy analysts, "peak oil" -- the coming energy scarcity caused by an expected drop in oil production. Fleming's plan would promise everyone a minimum share of energy.

Partisans of all these schemes assert their superiority over a carbon tax on gasoline and other fuels. They call such taxes regressive, since as a rule flat taxes penalize the poor. But Dan Rosenblum, a lawyer and cofounder of the Carbon Tax Center, doesn't see the ideas as fundamentally different from a tax.

"They avoid the word 'tax,' and there is a benefit to that," he says. "But we're all saying that you ought to pay for dumping carbon into the atmosphere."

Some carbon tax plans address the "regressive" charge with provisions for returning revenue through reduced income taxes or rebates.

In the UK, skeptics of personal carbon trading call it an administrative nightmare and an infringement on civil liberties. In the United States, with a much larger population, much greater aversion to government interference, and less widespread appreciation of the threat of climate change, such a scheme may seem unthinkable. That could change if it's successfully implemented in the UK, and if the perceived threat of global warming intensifies.

In the UK, Prescott says that in their surveys of the public, "the idea of an allowance is very popular. There seems to be a pretty high level of recognition that something has to happen."

Because of the relative administrative simplicity and the Alaska precedent, Barnes believes the sky trust scheme, at least, should be politically palatable in the United States, and there are indications that we could be headed in that general direction. This year's remaining Democratic presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system that would auction permits to companies, thereby generating revenue for the federal government.

"The question is," says Barnes, "to whom does that money belong?"

How to Create Trillions of Dollars Out of Hot Air (Excerpt)

HubPages.com
March 2010

... Let’s take a look under the covers of the Carbon Credit Trading scam.

1. Firstly, there is considerable doubt amongst scientists that there is global warming at all. Many scientists in fact think that the earth is actually cooling. As one climatologist said, "it is anybody’s guess. Next year might be warmer, or it might be cooler. In ten years time, there is just as much chance that the earth will be warmer, as that it will be cooler. We simply do not know." This is the most sensible thing I have heard so far about global warming.


2. Secondly, even if there were global warming, there is no real proof that it is caused by carbon emissions. There have been times in the past when there was many, many times the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to today, and the earth was cooler, not warmer. In fact there is considerable evidence that increased volume of CO2 is a consequence of global warming, not the cause. The most plausible explanation for global warming is that it is caused by the activity of the sun, and there is much empirical and scientific evidence to support this.


3. Thirdly, even if there were global warming, and even if it was caused by carbon emissions, Carbon Credit Trading will do nothing to help either reduce the emissions, or to help save the planet. Rich companies and countries can still put as much CO2 into the atmosphere as they like (even increase it) as long as they can pay for the privilege. Rich countries will buy the right to pollute the earth from developing countries who cannot afford (Africa for example) to pollute the earth as much. This is whole idea is absolute lunacy ...

Tradable Individual Pollution Allowances
Personalising carbon emissions (March 5, 2005)
Personal carbon trading (Wikipedia)
Personal Carbon Trading, Sustainable Development Commission
Now we could be hit with green tax for turning up the heating or using the car (November 9, 2009)
What are personal carbon allowances?
Will carbon allowances for individuals - with credits and penalties - cut carbon emissions? (2007)
Government must not abandon work on personal carbon trading (May 26, 2008)
Zerofootprint: The Ins and Outs of Carbon Trading (October 12, 2006)
The idea of tradable personal carbon allowances, or domestic tradable quotas as they are also called, is not new. The concept was first proposed in the mid 1990s, when it was largely ignored as Utopian and unworkable. But it is now being taken seriously by the British Government, among others. A tradable personal carbon allowance scheme could work like this. The government calculates a target for the total emissions it will allow from personal electricity, gas and transport, which are responsible for most domestic carbon production. (The target could be derived from the Kyoto international emissions agreement, or some other sustainability measure.) This total is converted into ‘carbon points,’ and every citizen receives an equal share. The points are like a currency, to be used alongside the regular currency, although they only apply to carbon. When someone buys fuel, or an airline ticket, or pays an electricity bill, they use their carbon points as well as their money. In fact, the two currencies could be integrated so that both worked with the same debit or credit card. Now someone who was frugal in their energy use (say, who had installed solar heating and a wind turbine for electricity generation and who cycled to work) could end up with surplus points. Meanwhile, someone else might drive a SUV, have a houseful of electronic gadgets and fly to distant holiday destinations, thereby exceeding their allocation. Under the personal tradable carbon allowance scheme, these two individuals could trade points, the carbon cutter selling to the carbon guzzler. The deal would take place on an open market, and the price of the points would be set by that market.
Personal Carbon Rationing May Be Needed (September 8, 2009)
A UK think tank has released a report saying that if at the end of the UK’s first carbon budget period in 2012, carbon emissions have not reduced, the government will need to face up to the prospect of introducing personal carbon trading as a “plan B.” Personal carbon trading would cut emissions by giving every person in the country a quota of free carbon credits which would be needed to buy electricity, gas, and even plane tickets. “Unlike food rations during the war, carbon credits would be tradable, so people with small carbon footprints could sell their spare credits while people with gas guzzlers and houses full of energy-hungry gadgets would need to buy extra credits to cover their extra emissions,” the Institute for Public Policy Research says in the report, Plan B? The prospects for personal carbon trading. Over time the quotas would shrink, in line with the need to hit emissions reduction targets.
Trial produces encouraging results for backers of personal carbon budgets (February 3, 2009)
The fundamental principal of giving every person in the country a carbon budget -- initially budgets would probably cover emissions from key areas such as buildings and transport, but could be extended to cover "all goods and services"... Budgets could be managed through existing technology -- such as bank cards, loyalty and fuel cards or company expense accounts... Also, instead of individual trading, credits could be bought and sold by groups such as local authorities or employers... Such a scheme would be technically feasible by 2013 but he predicted 2020 was a more likely date for its introduction when technology had developed to make it easier to cut emissions. A further trial is to be launched with volunteer local authorities. "Some people will adopt greener living because they think it's the right thing to do, but the bulk of the population need to feel that they are part of a movement. The government has to become bolder in getting more directly involved in behaviour change."
What we need is CarbonWatchers (October 3, 2005)
Carbon allowances would work as follows. Each adult would receive an equal allowance, with children receiving a lower share. The annual allowance would reduce over time to make the necessary national savings. Allowances would be issued for free, and would be tradable. So those who lived a thrifty lifestyle would be able to make money by selling their spare quota and people with more carbon-intensive lives could buy more. Trading would be a vital part of the system, given that some people's carbon emissions today are more than ten times those of others.
The practicalities of the scheme would be straightforward. Every time you wanted to buy petrol, pay your gas or electricity bill, or get on a plane, you would have to either surrender some of your carbon allowance or buy the necessary additional allowances. Everyone would have a carbon card with which to manage their carbon account. Carbon would become a parallel currency, and people would learn to manage their carbon budgets as they do their money.
Individuals could trade carbon currency (July 20, 2006)
Miliband's vision of a society driven by carbon credit cards has left commentators with some reservations. There are fears that, when push comes to shove, it is simply making energy more expensive to buy, and those already facing fuel poverty will be given further incentive not to turn the heating on when it gets cold or flick on a fan when temperatures soar. Those who have the money to drive the symbol of ecological irresponsibility, the SUV, will absorb the extra cost and have their conscience cleared of guilt as they are paying for their emissions. And those in most need of the extra cash from carbon credits will be those least able to install micro-generators.
The Global Warming Survival Guide (TIME Magazine, 2007)
The essential injustice of global warming is that the poor will suffer the worst effects while contributing far less to carbon emissions than the rich. So here's a radical solution: divide greenhouse-gas emissions by population, and give everyone in the world the right to emit the same amount of carbon—a personal carbon allowance. Essentially, allowances are a cap-and-trade scheme for individuals. They set a clear target and let the market work out the details. Bike to work and live beneath your allowance, and you can sell your carbon credits to energy spendthrifts who refuse to give up their SUVs. The balance of your allowance might be recorded on a sort of carbon-debit card, so if you buy that SUV, you'll be spending carbon too. If you want to keep living as if it's 1989, all you have to do is pay for it.
Cap and Trade Carbon Emissions or Impose a Flat Carbon Tax (TIME Magazine, 2007)
With cap-and-trade programs, governments limit the level of carbon that can be emitted by an industry. Companies that hold their emissions below the cap can sell their remaining allowance on a carbon market, while companies that exceed their limit must purchase credits on that market. Carbon taxes are more straightforward: a set tax rate is placed on the consumption of carbon in any form—fossil-fuel electricity, gasoline—with the idea that raising the price will encourage industries and individuals to consume less. At the moment, cap-and-trade has the upper hand, since it serves as the backbone of the current Kyoto Protocol, and helped the U.S. reduce acid rain in the 1990s—but don't write off the tax just yet. Supporters of the carbon tax argue that a cap-and-trade system would be too difficult to administer—and too easily gamed by industries looking to sidestep emissions caps. Cap-and-trade advocates counter that, like all other flat taxes, a carbon levy would disproportionately burden lower-income families, who spend a greater percentage of their income on energy than rich households. So which system will have the largest impact on carbon consumption? A 10% flat carbon tax might reduce the demand for carbon about 5% or less, according to an analysis by the Carbon Tax Center, an environmental advocacy group. That may not be enough. Businesses and governments haven't figured out how the two competing regimes can work together, but in the end, the world may need both.