PHOTO: Tim McGraw with his head stuck in a treeHey that lump of coal in your Christmas Stocking could be worth a fortune to you.
A "carbon market" is built on the idea that,if greenhouse gas emissions are capped by law, then the legal right to emit these gasses becomes a commodity that can be traded. But without legislation, there can be no market, as IDEAcarbon (pdf) acknowledges:
The global carbon market is moving into a critical new phase of development. If it is to succeed over the long term, both in its role in reducing carbon emissions and as a financial market in its own right, legislators need to provide certainty of a regulatory framework that will be robust, flexible, and valid over the long term.
The company’s website is surprisingly candid about the influence it exerts over the UK Government:
Working with the key decision makers who are shaping the future of the market enables us to accurately predict market trends and provide tailored strategic advice to clients.
In other words, the interests of investors and national policy makers must be aligned. And it would be most fortunate if they were one and the same.
There's gold in green: profiting from climate change
The double standards of our eco accountants, By Ben Pile
Posted in Environment, 3rd December 2008 14:30 GMT
There's gold in that there green [SOURCE]
Prominent environmental campaigner, and author of Kyoto 2, how to manage the Global Greenhouse, Oliver Tickell protests of carbon trading schemes that, "Carbon fortunes are indeed being made, and many of them in the City of London, which dominates the global carbon marketplace". Instead, he favours carbon offsetting – paying poor people not to develop their economies – rather than trading.
But Oliver’s eyes are greener than his mind; he too stands to profit from his environmental activism. His father, former diplomat and patron of the neo-Malthusian Optimum Population Trust, Sir Crispin Tickell, who made the first arguments influential for the greening of the UK Government in the 1970s with his book, Climatic Change and World Affairs, was appointed chair of a committee to check the integrity of carbon-offsetting firm, Climate Care, part of JPMorgan's Environmental Markets group.
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