Chicago Climate Exchange Closed

by Bob Adelmann

On Election Day 2010, Reuters noted briefly that Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) was “shedding some 40 employees from its … Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) by the end of the year, with further cuts [expected] in 2011.” In its curt announcement, Reuters said that all trading on that exchange had virtually stopped in July “due to the lack of U.S. action on climate change.”

Steve Milloy expected much more fanfare from the media. Commenting on the news, Milloy said that over the last 15 years, “cap and trade has been one of the most stridently debated public policy controversies … but it is dying a quiet death.”

Incredibly (but not surprisingly), although thousands of news articles have been published about CCX by the lamestream media over the years, a Nexis search conducted a week after CCX’s announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise. [Emphasis added.]

Outside of a report in Crain’s Chicago Business and a soft-pedaled article in a small trade publication, the media has entirely ignored the demise of the … effort at carbon trading. Even Glenn Beck, who has dedicated quite a bit of Fox News airtime to exposing CCX, has yet to mention the news.

Founded in 2002 by Northwestern University professor Richard Sandor with $1.1 million of grant money from the left-wing Joyce Foundation, CCX was to be the jackpot winner for those planning to profit from the coming cap-and-trade bills pending in Congress. The exchange found investors ranging from Ford, DuPont, Motorola, the University of California, Tufts University, Michigan State University, and the National Farmers Union all the way to Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s company, Generation Investment Management.

As Raven Clabough wrote, cap and trade “is a system that redistributes wealth from successful companies to less successful companies … by forcing companies that emit more gas [than allowed by the government] to give money to companies that emit less gas. It is Marxism at its best (sic).” The market has been estimated at between $500 billion and $10 trillion and the consequent profit potential is gigantic.

Congress was on a roll. When the Waxman-Markey bill (aka, the Owellian-named American Clean Energy and Security Act) passed the House in June, 2009, it was touted as a system “under which the [federal] government sets a limit (cap) on the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted nationally. The cap is [then] reduced over time [in order] to reduce total carbon emissions.” Producers of those greenhouse gases would be issued “allowances” that they could then sell to others, using the CCX to facilitate those trades. Those producing more than allowed would be required to purchase allowances from those under producing, thus the moniker “cap and trade.”

Critics included the Heritage Foundation, which concluded that such caps would

– reduce GDP by $7.4 trillion by the year 2035
– destroy 844,000 jobs
– raise electricity rates by 90 percent, and
– increase the federal debt by nearly 30 percent

The Competitive Enterprise Institute declared that the bill would be “the largest tax hike in world history.”

But momentum for the Waxman-Markey bill began to fade as the Great Recession continued, Climategate exposed the truth behind global-warming claims, and the Tea Party began to push back against big government. Investors in CCX began to bail out, leaving the founder, Professor Sandor with a nice $100 million profit, and the ICE holding the bag.

As Milloy put it,

With the demise of CCX carbon trading, only the still-pending Waxman-Markey bill is keeping cap and trade alive – technically at least – in the U.S…. Despite this good news, opponents of carbon regulation will need to remain vigilant. While radical greens and the…”clean energy” industry are down, they are not out.

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Al Gore has gone Insane

An Inconvenient Lunatic: Gore Says Climate Change is the new Global Terror

Hindustan Times

Nobel Peace Prize winner and champion climate campaigner Al Gore outlined the doom the world is awaiting because of climate change and expressed disappointment at world leaders failing to clinch a treaty to fight the new global terror. Terming the logjam in climate negotiations as a ‘startling paradox’, the man, whose documentary, The Inconvenient Truth won an Oscar said the year 2010 had seen worst of climate change.

“There was severe drought in Russia and extreme flooding in Pakistan. What more evidence is required for action,” he said at HT Leadership Summit.

His worst fear was that after failure of Copenhagen climate summit the talks where heading towards another “zombie” like the Doha process on World Trade Organisation negotiations. Gore’s solution for the problem was taking the issue back to the grassroots and creating a political storm to compel the leaders to react to climate change.

The former vice president blamed his own country United States – world second biggest carbon emitter — for failing to legislate a carbon law to curb emissions, resulting in failure of Copenhagen.

“There are six anti-climate lobbyists for every member of the Senate,” he said, adding that such interest groups backed by billions of dollars by polluting companies in US were making an organised attempt to change the public opinion on climate change.

“They believe that by deceiving people and creating false doubts climate science, they can delay the legislation,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner for year 2007 with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said.

He like many leaders at the HT Summit had said that a solution to climate crises is not possible without involving business. For this, he recommended a price on carbon, which could be a carbon tax or a price for emissions higher than a particular level for each sector.

Al Gore had a lot of hope for India to take a lead in fighting climate change.

“India has a tremendous opportunity to lead the world in energy efficient solutions and in effecting a rapid shift to use of alternate energy like wind and solar,” Gore said.

The former US president described warm India-United States relation as a constant and not partisan.

“Three consecutive governments of two different parties have continued strong relations with India…I am happy at the success of (Barack) Obama’s India visit,” he said.