Free Republic

The public is increasingly skeptical of global warming and far more worried about the economy than the environmentWhat the heck went wrong?" That, apparently, is the question roiling the environmental community as it realizes that the fight against climate change has fizzled. As Brad Plumer writes in the New Republic, everything was looking great in 2008 for a sweeping effort to make good on candidate Barack Obama's pledge to start turning back the rising oceans. The Democrats held Congress. Both John McCain and Mr. Obama had promised to push for capping carbon emissions. Corporations had gotten on board. Al Gore...

I wrote a few weeks ago that The only lower price than today’s closing price on a ton of carbon is ZERO. That’s true now more than ever. See the chart below from yesterday’s close of the Chicago Climate Exchange: [snip] And it’s still crashing. Last week the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced that they were scrapping the existing carbon trading program, and focusing on a new one that deals with directly sold carbon offsets rather than open trading.

The Chicago Climate Exchange is shutting down at the end of the year. Nobody’s buying carbon credits. Right now, days go by when not a single trade is done. When trades are done, carbon dioxide sells for just five cents a ton. It’s over.

In August, The Examiner reported that the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) was laying off employees. Two months later, drowned out by the hubbub of the mid-term elections, came an Oct. 21 announcement that CCX would end carbon trading which, as PajamasMedia’s Steve Milloy pointed out, was “the only purpose for which it was founded.” Funded by the left-wing Joyce Foundation, whose former board included none other than future president Barack Obama, Northwestern University professor Richard Sandor set up CCX as a “voluntary” method of trading “carbon credits.” It was envisioned as the main clearinghouse for what would eventually have been...