Not very nice birthday tidings on Kyoto’s seventh anniversary.
Der Spiegel reports:
…for the last half year, prices for CO2 certificates have dropped almost continuously, decreasing by about half, to around €8 ($10.60) per metric ton. Not even the closure of eight German nuclear power plants in 2011, and the resulting increase in demand for coal power, has done much to lastingly reverse the trend.
Michael Kröhnert, an emissions trader in Berlin, refers to the plunging prices as a slaughter. And he fully expects it to continue. “The spiral is spinning downward,” he says…
“Slaughter?”
The only blood being shed as the prices plummet is that of the speculators who had hoped to make a fortune trading in ‘carbon credits’ – those mysterious pieces of paper that represent no real commodity and no real service, but rather ‘permission’ to produce a ton of carbon dioxide as a by-product of otherwise productive economic activity.
If this seems like the medieval Catholic custom of buying and selling ‘indulgences’ (forgiveness of sins) , the resemblance is more than coincidental. The ‘permission’ comes from power-hungry NGOs, just as then.
It is an extortion racket – failure to purchase the ‘carbon credits’ leaves a business owner vulnerable to extreme consequences – fines, damage suits, or even imprisonment.
Here in the US, where the carbon trading racket never caught on, the government is instead attempting the same with government-mandated individual purchases of ‘health insurance,’ again motivated by threats.