From Tom Nelson: Plunging prices at the Chicago Climate Exchange
ABOVE: CCX CFI End of Day Summary: Offsets now selling for 25 cents each
Back on September 2nd, 2006/2007 instruments were selling as low as 20 cents and held that way until Sept 8th. So this is a boost. See the table below. Zimbabwe money notes are doing pretty well on Ebay. Right now they are actually more valuable than carbon credit notes.
[2008: Offsets were selling for over $7 each]
[Spin from Sept 9, 2009]: “Carbon market evolving”
“The U.S. appetite for carbon trading is strong CCX is now trading 3,000 to 5,000 contracts per day, with 20 percent of the largest carbon dioxide-emitting utilities in the U.S. participating; 11 percent of the Fortune 500 companies; and 17 percent of the Dow Jones Industrials companies.”
A recent Congressional Budget Office study projected that carbon offsets could be a $60 billion market in 2012, on a par with U.S. corn and wheat markets, and “as it grows beyond that, it will make forestry mitigation opportunities more important,” says Jeffrey O’Hara, senior economist, Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).
How can you have forestry mitigation opportunities when all management/recovery activities are shut down cold with endless environmental lawsuits?
Can I run outside and scream yet?
Buy low, sell high. They’re a steal right now. This deal won’t last forever. /snark
As they say; there’s a sucker born every minute; so scams that prey on them are always popular. Then of course maybe people who are that stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to have money anyway.
George
Like I said in an earlier thread here, buy your carbon credits today before the price goes down!
What I don’t understand is why any self respecting company would engage in the bizarre act of trading a virtual product? Perhaps they have money to burn (carbonize). More probable, they have $billions to bilk from the gullible.
Makes me laugh that the environmental activists who have been pawns for the carbon trading masters are against this.
Actually I think there is money to be made here. Buy up $20 worth. In a few years the certificates will be a novelty and would probably have saleability on Ebay for $5 each, especially if they were nicely engraved.
Take some to Al Gore’s next climate meeting and get them autographed. Then you could get $20.
Zimbabwe money notes are doing pretty well on Ebay. Right now they are actually more valuable than carbon credit notes.
There is no US/State mandate for Carbon Offsets.
Renewable Energy Credits still carry reasonable value due to State mandates.
IIRC, Eron came up with this idea, figured to make a killing by collecting rent on nearly every industry in the world.
This has been a scam from day one.
I do not see why this market exists at all. Who decides who had to pay credits and for what and who can earn credits and how? Will all those rules change if the Cap and Trade bill passes? If the .Gov wants to slow down the consumption of carbon based fuels just tax them! Why do we need this overly convoluted scheme?
Thanks for the tip. I just went out and bought a couple of Zimbabwe notes.
OT: I see that the not-quite-hewing-the-party-line Blog of Bloom at the BBC has gone on hiatus — nothing since July. Alas, it dared to suggest that things were not always as awful as portrayed.
Craig
When Carbon Credits were introduced in New Zealand, landowners cut down huge tracts of old growth forest, because carbon credits were only available for newly planted trees.
Like biofuels, carbon credits have environmental disaster written all over them.
It looks like Al Gore will need some patience before he will reach his goal of becoming the first “Carbon Billionaire”.
I always wish people the best in business but in his case I sincerely hope he goes bust.
Carbon credits are the new Housing Bubble….
-and .com
-and lending
-and Saving and Loan scandal
-combined…
Philip_B (14:49:12) :
The checky buggars actually nationalised the carbon credits, those areas havnt been replanted, theyve been clear felled, roots mulched, and put into dairy mostly.
Can you short the credits. Looking at the stall in temp there maybe downside left.
I bought my 8 year old a set of the Zimbabwe trillions 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. Worth every penny of the $7.00 as he now knows where Zimbabwe is, the basics of inflation and what the cool rock piles on the back of the notes are.
Wally welcome to the ranks of the bemused, baffled and bewildered. It’s a mad, mad world out there not fit for the likes of clear thinking and logical folk like thee and me.
Kindest Regards
A market for a non product-indeed an unproduct-is unstable? Duh.
Carbon Credits, Bah! Zimbabwe, Bah!
I’m stickin’ with my Confederate Bonds.
(and they’ve actually gone up quite nicely since I purchased them a few years back)
They know the joke is over.
Hank Hancock (14:21:36) : What I don’t understand is why any self respecting company would engage in the bizarre act of trading a virtual product?
Um, perhaps because substantially every financial instrument is a “virtual product”? Very few of the markets are “delivery” markets where you get stuff if you don’t properly close out your position, and even in those, most positions are closed out prior to delivery. (Generally, “delivery” is the big PITA for traders. They don’t what to deal with real stuff, getting it or needing to supply it.) BTW, as of about 1960 (something… 4? 6?) even our money is a ‘virtual product’. It is “fiat money” and has no intrinsic worth. That pretty paper in your pocket is worth what someone else believes it is worth, nothing more. Every time you hand over currency, or accept currency, you are making a trade for a “virtual product”… Also, your home owners insurance contract is a “virtual product” (as are most insurance contracts) along with your retirement annuity (and your Medicare promise of payment “someday” worth “something”…)
One of the truly bizarre and interesting aspects of Economics: Why people do this, all the time, everywhere…
Wally (14:45:13) : I do not see why this market exists at all. Who decides who had to pay credits and for what and who can earn credits and how? Will all those rules change if the Cap and Trade bill passes? If the .Gov wants to slow down the consumption of carbon based fuels just tax them! Why do we need this overly convoluted scheme?
Well, first off: Why?
Because the government needed to get the Wall Street boys on board with their anti-carbon agenda. If all it’s going to do is slam your stock trades, you are against it. But if you get a piece of the action with a whole new market… Suddenly Goldman Sachs et. al. started talking about the merits of the scheme. There is also a minor economics argument that markets are a more efficient allocator of the (planned to be) scarce resource.
Unfortunately, to get the scheme moved forward, the politicians had to basically give away “carbon indulgences” to all the impacted industries, and that excess supply drove the price down in the open market… So that sort of answers the “who” and the “Cap and Tirade” law impacts…
Philip_B (14:49:12) : When Carbon Credits were introduced in New Zealand, landowners cut down huge tracts of old growth forest, because carbon credits were only available for newly planted trees.
Like biofuels, carbon credits have environmental disaster written all over them.
Yup. Economics is full of subtile inversions of behaviour. That is why the founders of the USA left it out of the purview of the government. Unfortunately, our present crop of congress critters (and California state critters) don’t seem to “get it” and want to go play with the Social Control Economic Shiny Thing… to the detriment of all of us.
We really do need a “Hands Off Anything Economic” amendment…
I feel very confdent that the US carbon market will become every bit as successful as the EU version. /Sarc Off
wattsupwiththat (14:27:07) :
“Actually I think there is money to be made here. Buy up $20 worth. In a few years the certificates will be a novelty and would probably have saleability on Ebay for $5 each, especially if they were nicely engraved.”
Anthony,
Why wait a few years when a correct belief in global cooling could make you good money in January 2010? Please have a look my post on the “Forecasting the Earth’s Temperature” thread below to speculate on whether the Earth is cooling according to Roy Spencer’s data. I’m willing to bet against anyone reading this.
there even cheaper at bigbluecarbon.com
Voodoo economics. This a fake product. it will be impossible to hold and establish value on. A CPA will not allow these fakes to be valued on a company balance sheet. They aren’t audited and are worth less than penney stocks. Rolling Stone magazine wrote about Goldman Sachs getting this mess ramped up.
Just for the record, there must be a few people that made a killing riding these up to 7 dollars.
Don’t waste your money on carbon credits when there is a perfectly viable market for bridges spanning Sydney Harbour.
Send bank account details for more information.
You can trust me, I have a model of the bridge.
It’s a new world and I can’t say when the change occurred. Possibly the rot set in as soon as the USSR collapsed.
Energy producers are now aligned with energy rationers because the value of their product can be enhanced.
Energy rationers are aligned with political opportunists who see a chance to seize control of every detail of life.
Political opportunists are in control of the tax revenues of every wealthy nation.
Ah, I see. The decadance of democracy from 60 years of relative peace, wealth and security gives time for power to be accumulated by those who would manipulate voter complacency and impotence for the ultimate global power grab.
No one ever guaranteed that freedom and democracy could be maintained indefinitely. The British creation of a new world order based on parliamentary democracy 500 years ago was a guarantee of nothing.
How can ordinary voters regain control without violence that would defeat their objectives when all the political options are moving in the direction of increasing centralisation and micro management of every aspect of society.
It was never the end of history. It was the beginning of worldwide enslavement.
The end of the Cold War could have been but the beginning of the end game leading to perpetual enslavement of the masses.
Unless economic collapse concentrates minds and returns us to the righteous path by demonstrating that taxpayer funded wealth is a very delicate plant requiring careful nurturing.
I hope my bottle of wine has left me reasonably intelligible.