Carbon traders?
City institutions are pretty savvy when it comes to securing the future of their businesses. Decades of experience have taught them which opportunities are genuine and which are fake. During the last decade, climate change departments have sprung up in many international investment banks, accountancy and law firms around the world, keen to cash in on the massive revenue streams from advising on and/or trading in carbon and climate markets.
Maybe the penny has begun to drop, since many such institutions are already starting to show signs of cold feet on climate change and are slashing employees working in such areas. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports (via Bloomberg):
Investment banks are cutting traders and analysts in climate-related businesses as a slump in shares and carbon emission permits coincides with a deadlock in international climate talks.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Managing Director for Environmental Markets Odin Knudsen left his post in New York by mutual accord after his team was shrunk, while UBS Securities LLC fired Vice Chairman Jon Anda and his Climate Policy Group co-workers, Anda and Knudsen said in interviews. Ben Lynch left his London job as an alternative-energy analyst for Commerzbank AG and it was taken over by a utilities analyst, company spokeswoman Claire Tappenden said. The departures took place since September.
The biggest banks, trying to recover from trading losses and a clampdown on investing their own money, are clipping resources from emissions-related businesses as United Nations talks have failed for years to extend Kyoto Protocol greenhouse- gas curbs beyond their expiration in 2012. The International Emissions Trading Association, the main carbon-market trade group, has seen its membership slide about 6 per cent this year.
“People are leaving the industry because they’ve been fired or because they see no prospects,” said Emmanuel Fages, head of energy research for Europe at Societe Generale SA in Paris. “That is the sad story.” (source)
“Sad story” is not exactly how I would put it. You would have thought, if the world were “rushing ahead” towards global carbon trading, the banks would be pulling out all the stops to ensure they were first in line to cream off a healthy profit. But it appears, at long last, that these institutions are coming to their senses and rapidly bailing out of an imaginary, manufactured market, mired in corruption and bogged down in fraud – and with little future, given the current global financial strife.
And once the money dries up, it’s Game Over.
Australian Climate Madness 
Only pollies want it, good for raising TAXES
The whole AGW scare is blowing away in the wind like a dried-up chicken turd.
The first independent assessment of the quality of products and services offered in the Australian voluntary carbon market was recently conducted by Australian website carbonoffsetwatch.org.au.
Of the 57 Australian organisations that offer ‘carbon offsets’, (if that sort of thing rocks your boat!) only 20 (35%) were ranked from ‘outstanding’, ‘good’ to ‘average’. The other 37 providers (65%) either withdrew, couldn’t be bothered to respond, or did not provide sufficient information and failed to obtain a ranking.
It’s not just the banks who’ve cold feet on climate change … even the overwhelming majority of those offering carbon offsets in Australia know that flogging a dead horse is a waste of time!
The conspiracy theorist in me always felt it was investment bankers that were the real puppet masters behind this AGW scare. Without bankers pulling political strings and supporting the Eco-facade, the nonsense will go away. The way I saw it, the only group that really came out ahead in all the ETS schemes were the bankers. Does this mean it’s time to replace the investment banker that runs CSIRO?
oh no, not pollies, bankers…its the bankers who want some sort of “price” on energy consumtion…remember it was enron who was the first corp to talk about a price on co2 emissions. and the bestest buddy to the coe of eron was? al gore of course! follow the money…
It’s about time somebody has the sense to see what a fraud and a rip off this whole Carbon Credits and Tax is.We need the GreensLabor Government to see the WRITING on the WALL and dump the Carbon Tax.If they don’t there chances of reelection are minimal,i know i will never vote Labor again,and they will only have themselves to blame.
…….. And once the money dries up, it’s Game Over
Do tell me please exactly where Wayne baby and Julia with Bob are getting all their money from to run the charade in Australia? I pray the money runs out soon….
Well the criminal banksters get what they deserve since they started it.
I’m just pleased to see that someone is actually called Odin. I wonder if he had a son called Thor?
I imagine it is pretty hard to sack a god, so his “leaving by mutual accord” is probably a good thing…
A suggested view from Canada. Peter Fichiff, The best economist I’ve heard.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/cost-of-climate-change/1305336122001/page/2
They’ve finally understood about green…
… too costly … to inefficient … too ineffective … too unreliable … too unaffordable … no future.
They’ve finally understood there will be no ‘Kyoto Mark II’. That will spell the end of carbon trading… the carbon price will collapse … game over.
Only the red poulett Gillard will continue gobbling up Al Gore’s snake oil….
Why, because it will give the neo stallinist labor imports Gillard, Cameron, Conroy, Wong and any other of the poisonous seedlings which should have been kept out of Australia, more excuses to raise taxes and waste all of it!