Some good news on the global warming fanaticism front:
Global warming-inspired cap and trade has been one of the most stridently debated public policy controversies of the past 15 years. But it is dying a quiet death. In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading — the only purpose for which it was founded — this year.
Although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law, like the Waxman-Markey scheme passed by the House in June 2009.
At its founding in November 2000, it was estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion. That estimate ballooned over the years to $10 trillion.
Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all the action in Chicago. The CCX’s backers wanted to use a new prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite literally, all the action in the world.
The CCX was the brainchild of Northwestern University business professor Richard Sandor, who used $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation to launch the CCX. For his efforts, Time named Sandor as one of its Heroes of the Planet in 2002 and one of its Heroes of the Environment in 2007.
The CCX seemed to have a lock on success. Not only was a young Barack Obama a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX, but over the years it attracted such big name climate investors as Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management.
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Despite this good news, opponents of carbon regulation will need to remain vigilant. While radical greens and the rent-seeking “clean energy” industry are down, they are not out.
Though they will never again dare utter the term “cap and trade,” they will reformulate and rebrand carbon regulation in the form of a national “renewable electricity standard” (RES), a “carbon tax,” or perhaps something even more innocent and cuddly — like “free cotton candy for everyone (FCCE).”
The global warming mob will be back, with their old agenda and new deceit, in 2011. Given that Republican politicians have a long history of squishiness on environmental issues, the rest of us will need to be prepared to continue the battle against Marxist/socialist and economy-killing energy rationing and taxes.
See also Cap and Trade – Lobbyism Gone Wild With Your Tax Dollars
Well, I certainly wouldn’t have expected to see this fanatical global warming religion experience such a setback in such a short period of time.
It looks to me like the tides turned at the very latest back when the global warming hoax was exposed in a manner so obvious that was simply no longer defensible, no matter how fanatical one’s views.
Then, most recently, Hal Lews wrote a thoroughly damning resignation letter to the American Physical Society that might have opened one or the other more person’s eyes, and that will not go unremembered for a long time, in my opinion.
The mob will either be back with more global warming hysteria, or they’ll just come up with a new scare. In case they do, let me do them a favor and list those never-materializing overblown frenzies that I can think of that other people have already called dibs on to exploit or subjugate taxpayers one way or another …
- Killer Bees
- Acid Rain
- Axis of Evil
- Iraqi WMDs
- Nuclear War
- Global Cooling
- Live Threatening Pollution
- Terrorism
- Communism
- Overpopulation
- Ozone Holes
- SARS
- Bird Flu
- Swine Flu
- Mad Cow Disease
- Foreigners Taking Your Jobs
- Anthrax
- …
… and so on and so forth. We’ve been there before. We’ll be there again.