Reply #11: First and foremost the carbon market is a rigged game: [View All]

[Poll_Blind]

FYI, all my information on this is was gleaned in research I did during the European carbon market's collapse last year. However, who wouldn't expect U.S. companies to do the same?

  The carbon market, in it's current state, is a joke a sham...and an insult. Companies were asked to estimate their carbon output to determine how many credits should be "created". The carbon market would mean something except the companies in question grossly inflated their carbon production numbers. When it came time to pass the credits around, most had more than they needed. However, some buying and trading by speculators drove the price up a bit. However, it became apparent sometime last year when the first (IIRC) annual report on carbon consumption in Europe came out, that something went fantastically right...or very, very wrong.

  All the companies had done amazingly well on their carbon output...so well that analysts and speculators (who had been burned by buying carbon emission credits at a falsely-inflated price) looked into the matter and found that the companies had been gaming the system from the outset to cause the market to collapse and provide them with exceedingly cheap and plentiful carbon emission credits.

  So to address your question, it is a way to "have your cake and eat it too". However, it's designed to be an expensive, painful way to do so. Unforuntately, the corporations themselves have artificially inflated the amount of carbon they report they produced (initially) so (with the affore-mentioned collapse of the carbon market last year) it's a very cheap way to "have your cake and eat it too."

  I like the idea of a carbon market. On paper, and if it were better set-up, it would have basically made it cheaper for companies to work on reducing their emissions rather than purchasing carbon emission credits. However, the way it is now, it's a joke.

  Just another way companies use to fuck us over, keep polluting and destroying the planet so they can turn an easier buck, euro, yen, what-have-you.

PB