Has anyone ever said where carbon fees go? Does all of it end up in Gore’s bank account?
I wish I was a political cartoonist, I would draw the picture of them I have in my head.
Optimistic that a Democrat-controlled Congress would pass cap-and-trade legislation Gore lobbied for, GIM and David Blood’s old GSAM firm took big stakes in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) for carbon trading. Accordingly, CCX was poised to make windfall profits selling CO2 offsets if and when cap-and-trade was passed. Speaking before a 2007 Joint House Hearing of the Energy Science Committee, Gore told members: “As soon as carbon has a price, you’re going to see a wave [of investment] in it…There will be unchained investment.”
After all, what better way to reduce evil carbon than to make it a profitable commodity? But unfortunately for GIM and CCX investors, trading hot air credits proved just too good to be true.
Between May of 2008 and October of 2009 the CCX market value for one metric ton of carbon plummeted from $7 per metric ton to $0.10 along with the shareholders’ investment values. Losers included the Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, and Waste Management, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities, and a number of universities.
By 2010, GIM approximately doubled a 9.6% stake it had purchased in Camco International Ltd., a manager of products to limit greenhouse gases. But by October of that year disaster struck again. Republicans took control of the House, dashing all cap-and-capitalize hopes along with huge profit prospects for either Camco or CCX. The latter shut down operations in November of that year.