Now about the trade in cap and trade, it all sounds so very above board doesn’t it? What if you knew that the oil industry was creating a major coalition to study the impact of oil on the environment and that this study would then be the primary factor deciding not only government legislation, legislation that would permanently change the face of American economics, but would additionally quite nicely feather the nests of all the oil barons? What if the results of this study always found in favor of the oil industries stated purposes (chiefly drilling for more oil)? Would you believe that the study was absolutely impartial and accurate? Now apply that to the studies on climate change because that is exactly what is happening. (Refer to the previous article on the EPA’s position on climate change and the subsequent suppression of Carlin’s comments.) There are currently several small trading markets, (the CCX and the ETS are just two) that buy and sell carbon credits. These markets are set to make investors enormous profit should the government mandate a cap on carbon emissions. What happens in a nut shell is a manipulation of the basic laws of supply and demand. As the carbon caps decrease there is a greater demand for the carbon credits and the costs go up. By severely regulating the amounts of carbon a company can emit the government can implement a false scarcity, limit the supply and create a greater demand, thereby controlling the price of the stock in these markets. With the government in control they can bypass the free trade market altogether. The question is who stands to profit? Now wouldn’t you just know it, your friend and mine, that great environmentalist himself has been working on putting into place governmental policy on climate change since the days he was in office, yup – Al Gore. Seems he owns a major investment firm dedicated to investing in carbon trading, called Generation Investment Management. From what I can tell his firm has billions invested in this little scheme. Now the real kicker is that cap and trade has so many ways for polluters to bypass cutting their emissions in any meaningful way that this bill is more akin to buying and selling indulgences than creating an environmental initiative. Follow the money, my friend, always follow the money.

LB