Intro



Billions, possibly  trillions of dollars of free carbon credits (license to produce CO2) were handed out to big business. In the absence of global warming, they would be worthless.

Carbon credits bring Lakshmi Mittal £1bn bonanza

LAKSHMI MITTAL, Britain’s richest man, stands to benefit from a £1 billion windfall from a European scheme to curb global warming.

 http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/business/article192167.ece

 

The world's leading climate scientist James Hansen in the Guardian.

Governments today, instead, talk of "cap-and-trade with offsets", a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/aug/26/james-hansen-climate-change

 
What is Cap and Trade  (carbon trading) ?

Emissions trading or cap and trade is a market-based approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants (in this case, carbon dioxide).

A central authority (usually a governmental body) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that may be emitted. The limit or cap is allocated or sold to firms in the form of emissions permits which represent the right to emit or discharge a specific volume of the specified pollutant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading



Who created Cap and Trade ?

Enron Also Courted Democrats  

Dan Morgan, Washington Post
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, January 13, 2002

(Enron chairman Kenneth) Lay urged President Clinton and Vice President Gore to back a "market-based" approach to the problem of global warming -- a strategy that a later Enron memo makes clear would be "good for Enron stock."

On Aug. 4, 1997, Lay and seven other energy executives met with Clinton, Gore, Rubin and other top officials at the White House to discuss the U.S. position at the upcoming conference on global warming in Kyoto, Japan. Lay, in a memo to Enron employees, said there was broad consensus in favor of an emissions-trading system.

Enron officials later expressed elation at the results of the Kyoto conference. An internal memo said the Kyoto agreement, if implemented, would "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States."

No longer on Washington Post website, republished here

http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/THE-ENRON-COLLAPSE-Gaining-Favor-in-Washington-2884271.php



Who promotes it ?
The biggest lobbying group at the Copenhagen global climate conference was IETA

BP, Conoco Philips, Shell, E.ON , EDF , Gazprom, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley..

http://www.ieta.org/Industry-Energy-&-Power



Who benefits ?

Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade

 Market could be worth $3tn a year.. The carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU's emissions trading scheme.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/29/carbon-trading-market-copenhagen-summit



The problem ?

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123655590609066021.html



Thanks to big business lobbying, support for climate change is effectively also support for cap and trade because global treaties like Kyoto are based on it as is the European Emissions Trading System.

Despite almost universal disapproval by environmental groups, cap and trade has been the subject of little high profile public scrutiny or debate. James Hansen (world's top climate scientist),  environmental and political  groups such as  Friends of the earth and Red Pepper., campaigners such as  Naomi Klein and George Monbiot have spoken out against it.

This website seeks to  reveal the truth about  cap and trade, its history , who benefits and who loses.

If  new energy sources are required , a carbon tax  can be levied.  It excludes the sharks and puts the process into accountable hands.







The reason for the crude layout is to allow convenient copying and pasting into other social media.


Contact email ScraptheTrade@ntlworld.com

Twitter @scrapthetrade

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