Posted on 06/06/2004 9:06:16 PM PDT by take
Brokers gather to trade emissions credits
As carbon dioxide emissions continue to be a problem, Europe takes the lead in the fight against global warming.
Buyers, sellers, brokers and lawyers, even ''specialists in carbon asset creation management,'' convene Wednesday on the banks of the Rhine to launch a new business for a worried world.
CarbonExpo, in the cavernous congress halls of Cologne, Germany, is a three-day trade fair for those who would deal in carbon dioxide -- buying and selling permits to discharge the waste gas chiefly blamed for global warming.
This carbon trading is a Europe-wide effort to use supply-and-demand to control emissions and protect the climate, in the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol.
But the supply far outstrips demand, Europeans are finding. The climate of this marketplace itself is decidedly cloudy. Advance prices have plunged by half.
''At this point, one shouldn't portray it as a liquid, vibrant market,'' said Atle C. Christiansen of PointCarbon, a Norway-based research firm.
More than six years after governments negotiated the historic climate accord in Kyoto, Japan, the world is taking only halting steps -- not always forward, never in unison -- to follow through.
In fact, the Kyoto treaty itself is not yet in force, since it hasn't been ratified, as required, by industrial countries emitting a total of 55 percent of ''greenhouse gases,'' such as carbon dioxide, that trap heat in the atmosphere that Earth otherwise would give off.
GROWING CONCERNS
Russia's expected accession later this year would clear the 55 percent hurdle. But even a functioning Kyoto agreement would have little impact: Its limited reductions would barely slow the greenhouse buildup, and the biggest emitter, the United States, would remain outside the treaty.
Scientists, meanwhile, grow increasingly concerned.
''If carbon dioxide had a color, if people saw the sky getting darker, people would have no problem recognizing what's going on,'' said climatologist David Pierce of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
What's going on is that the world's daily output of man-made carbon dioxide, from burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, is 11 percent greater today than a decade ago. Under Kyoto, industrial nations were actually supposed to be cutting back greenhouse gas discharges to 8 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. The planet, meanwhile, is warming. Global temperatures rose almost 1 degree Fahrenheit from 1981 to 1998, NASA scientists report.
If greenhouse emissions aren't cut back soon, temperatures could rise many degrees more, expanding oceans, causing drought, intensifying storms and altering climate in other ways, say scientists of the U.N.-organized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As the mercury rose in recent years, so did U.S. political opposition -- especially from the Bush administration -- to reducing power-plant and car-exhaust emissions, imposing energy taxes or taking other steps to try to stabilize the atmosphere. Higher energy and other costs would seriously damage the economy, it was said.
Economic analyses ranged widely, from a projected annual cost of $112 per U.S. family to comply with Kyoto, to $2,700 a family, with heavy U.S. job losses. Environmentalists said dire projections didn't factor in the costs -- to coastal states, agriculture and other sectors -- of doing nothing, or the job growth in new energy industries.
''It is hard to think of a public policy issue that is harder than this one,'' said American economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, who has studied climate's complexities.
PROFIT MOTIVES
But he and others say any ultimate plan must include ''cap-and-trade'' -- schemes whereby emissions caps are imposed, and companies that emit less gas than allowed can sell unused allotments to others who overshoot the target. The profit motive is expected to drive efforts and technology to rein in emissions.
''Market incentives on this can be enormously powerful,'' Sachs told an April symposium at New York's Columbia University, where he heads the Earth Institute.
Europe's ''cap-and-trade'' is by far the biggest and most ambitious.
''We want to demonstrate that this works, using market-based tools,'' the European Union's environment commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, told The Associated Press.
The EU's 25 nations, whose leaders claim a ''special responsibility'' to lead on climate with Washington on the sidelines, ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 and put its provisions into European law.
U.N.-organized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://unfccc.int/
I shake my head to disgust.
go back to sleep
Do you live in Kyoto? I drive a Toyota, won't that get me a free pass? I like Toyota way bedder than Volvo! Don't try and sell me none of them Hybrids, neither! Their not all they're cracked up to be for mileage if ya drive 'em with the airconditioner on, right? I miss my Freeon!!!
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
I miss my Freeon!!!so do i but, the U.N took it away from you
LOL
And the UN is absolutely powerless to affect that report with ANY enforcement -- regardless of the level of emmissions, aren't they?
How would you know?...At least Volvo is an American owned company.
You better look at the N.G.O
Since the revision of the Clean Air Act in 1990, the government has experimented with market-based approaches to provide financial incentives for companies that voluntarily comply with clean air standards and develop new technology for reducing emissions. In this case, utilities and companies that meet or exceed their targets for reducing nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons that produce smog are awarded credits that they can sell to other companies violating the standards to bring them into compliance.
Who are the Greenies? Surely it's not just a busload of bio majors who will be getting their masters in just a few more years. Maybe if their committee will buy off on their thesis.
Best to do a little homework on who foisted the UN and multilateral environmental treaty law in the first place. Here's a clue: it started under Roosevelt. The enviro-regulatory gambit goes farther back than that. Lenin started it before he had even completed consolidating power.
Just say who. I could guess or I could do some homework, but I don't know which book to read.
Rockefeller, British Royals, Prince Bernhard, Pews, Packards, Kennedys... basic old money interests.
I don't know which book to read.
LOL! You could try mine. For a primer on how it worked in the California energy market, try this post. For a discussion of how that works out in coming policies, try this post.
Whole families are behind this? Amazing. Most families can't agree on what to have for dinner.
Money is the tie that binds. The foundations pull the strings and the heirs sit on the boards. Which individuals call those shots and how is less obvious and more variable.
If you don't want my book (which is more about how to fix this mess than who is playing it) you can try Undue Influence by Ron Arnold. It's well documented.
bump
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