The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on October 21, 2010 that it will cease carbon trading this year. However, Steve Milloy reporting on Pajamasmedia.com (November 6, 2010) finds this huge story strangely unreported by the mainstream media.

To some key analysts the collapse of the CCX appears to show that international carbon trading is “dying a quiet death.” Yet Milloy finds that such a major business failure has drawn no interest at all from the mainstream media. Milloy noted that a “Nexis search conducted a week after CCX’s announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise.”

Not until November 02, 2010 had the story even been picked up briefly and that was by Chicagobusiness.com (Crain’s). Reporter, Paul Merrion appeared to find some comfort that while CCX will cease all trading of new emission allowances at the end of the year, “it will continue trading carbon offsets generated by projects that consume greenhouse gases, such as planting trees.”

Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President


Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.



Failure of European Climate Market May Follow
Milloy writes, “although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law. Trading carbon was, “the only purpose for which it was founded.” But with their resurgence after the mid-terms the Republicans have now put a new cohort of global warming skeptics into the corridors of power.

Unlike the American voluntary scheme, the European cousin of the CCX, the European Climate Exchange (ECX), continues to trade due to the mandatory carbon caps of the Kyoto Protocol. But the future of the ECX will be in doubt unless a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol is introduced. That treaty expires in 2012. But the ineffectual Copenhagen Climate Conference (2009) exposed an inability among international politicians to agree on climate change. If this stalement persists then the European ECX may likely suffer the same fate as Chicago’s CCX.

More Job Losses in Green Trading Sector
Admitting that there will be “deep staff cuts,” Chief Financial Officer Scott Hill of Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange Inc. further conceded, "We had about 66 people when we bought the company [CCX]. I think we'll be closer to 25 by the end of the year. And then we'll reduce further into the first quarter." ICE had bought Climate Exchange PLC, which operated CCX, the European Climate Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, in April 2010 for around $634.5 million.

U.S. Corporations and Investors in Retreat
Speaking to the New York Times ( March 2010) Kristel Dorion, a developer with 10 years of experience putting together offset projects under the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), foresaw that investors were “quickly shifting focus elsewhere.”

Since its launch in 2003 the CCX succeeded in attracting major players such as Ford, Bank of America, IBM and Intel. By signing up as voluntary contributors these corporations made been making voluntary but legally binding commitment to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets either by cutting emissions or by buying emissions permits sold by other CCX members.

But Dorion warned, “The ones that are pulling out are all the American-based companies.”

The Republican election triumph is likely to push climate legislation even further off the political agenda. Nonetheless, California outlined its plans for it’s own cap-and-trade scheme with the ambition of a joint trading agreement by 2012 among members of the Western Climate Initiative, an alliance of 11 states and Canadian provinces.

http://www.suite101.com/content/carbon-trade-ends-on-quiet-death-of-chicago-climate-exchange-a305704
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The entire CCX was a scam from the very beginning. It was about convincing Americans that businesses should trade smoke, literally. Barack Obama was in on the scam from the very beginning. He and his cronies were planning on making over $10 trillion on this, according to insiders.

Al Gore and Goldman Sachs were in on this scam as well, buying up percentages of the company. Even Fannie Mae, under Franklin Raines, got into the act by putting up money to purchase the technology for the phony scam. Not one person in the mainstream media asked why Fannie Mae, a compnay chartered by Congress to only do mortgages, would invest money into a global warming scam.

If the CCX was ever investigated fully heads would roll, because there was tons of taxpayer money invested in the scam.

During 2000 and 2001, the Joyce Foundation, a progressive trust with assets near $1 billion, known for funding groups like Center for American Progress and the Tides Foundation, provided grants to CCX totaling $1.1 million. State Senator Obama served on the foundation's board of directors during that time and was instrumental in awarding the grants. Can you say Pay for Play?

Former Vice-President Al Gore became part-owner of CCX when his company, Generation Investment Management, made a sizeable investment. Gore brought with him his senior partner at GIM, David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with a company chalk full of former Goldman Sachs' executives.

Goldman Sachs itself soon joined the team buying a ten percent interest in CCX.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/40154/

Here it is in a nutshell; Obama's scheme was to pass laws that said that businesses would be Capped with an amount of pollution they would be allowed to produce during manufacturing. They would be assigned carbon credits. If they wanted to go over that amount they would have to Trade carbon credits with another business that didn't use all of their carbon credits for the year. In other words, the company would purchase carbon credits from companies that had some to spare.

Obama and his friends would make trillions being the only company in America that would keep track of all the carbon credits for every business in America. All trades of carbon credits would have a fee attached to them that the CCX would get.

It was a scam, because their is no way to keep an accurate count of a carbon footprint, and the scam would have cost businesses billions in regulation costs. It would have harmed the economy even further than Obama's other silly economic policies.

Obama's Cap & Trade legislation was to be the final stage of the scam, the enforcement arm that would ensure they would make trillions off the scam. Republicans had a huge wave election last week and the scammers got nervous enough to close up shop.

Cap and Trade was an idea to make money out of carbon pollution, not to get rid of pollution. Getting rid of carbon in the atmosphere is a good idea. Getting rid of cap and trade is a good idea too.

Getting rid of carbon in the atmosphere would result in the death of most of the life on earth.

Obviously what was meant was to remove the excess that we have put into it, not all of it.

Carbon Dioxide is Good for the Environment

That website is stupid. Anyone with any real knowledge of science would recognize that argument as false on so many levels.

If CO2 is so good for you why don't you try just breathing just it for a few minutes. That is nature of the argument your website presents. The fact that a little extra is good for plants has nothing to do with the bad effects on the human aspects on this planet.

You should research the mass quantities of money that have been spent on misinformation of exactly this type to convince people like you that burning carbon isn't a problem.

Humans cannot burn enough fossil fuels to reach the level that CO2 will be harmful to mammals.

So ... no clue at all? Try Wikipedia for a basic explanation of what Global Warming is about. Then go to the NASA website for specific information and finally to Woods Hole for advanced studies since most Global Warming problems are ocean related.

The CO2 effects on mammals are not from breathing it. It mostly centers around the effect on CHANGING their food supply and the inability to adapt in time. The article you quoted has nothing to do with global warming, which BTW, is what the Cap and Trade is all about. It simply answers the question "If CO2 levels go up, would breathing the air be harmful?"

Well, since I have no clue, could you tell me specifically what would happen to the food supply if the level of CO2 went up? I quoted an article before that said that plants would grow faster and larger, is that a bad thing? Will plants take over the world? Will plants start producing poisonous gas that will cause people to commit suicide? The clueless among us want to know.

You have producers and consumers on this planet. Humans consume O2 and produce CO2, plants including grass consume CO2 and produce O2 through various forms of photosynthesis. As the human population grows it also means that animal populations grow (cattle, hogs, fowl, goats, sheep, etc) and with that more CO2 is produced. As our species grows we clear more land for roads, housing, and business which means we lose plant life. As agriculture grows (cattle, swine, etc)we clear more land for farms or allow the cattle to graze which strip the land of plant life (which is why ranchers move cattle from one area to another) this in conjunction with deforestation for building material or in some countries to allow cattle ranching we have less plants to engage in photosynthesis and more mammals to produce CO2. Eventually the wheels will fall off of this wagon train as a result of our arrogance. CO2 is just one of many "greenhouse gasses" that nestle in the atmosphere to create the blanket that prevents heat from escaping in to space, its not strong enough unfortunately to block solar radiation but reduces the amount of heat that escapes. The question in tha matter of climate change is why is it happening? Is it a natural phenomenon, is it caused by our industrialization?, Is it a combination of the two? none of these have been answered yet because scientists have yet to disprove any of these questions. Based on temperature records and change of animal migration patterns, the decline of certain species and plants there is evidence that suggests man has a roll in it at least. I know that many on the right don't believe in any of this, but they also believe in "god".

Carbon Dioxide Rise May Alter Plant Life, Researchers Say


Also, it's nice to know that because plants are more water efficient at higher CO2 levels, plants and trees are actually able to grow in some arid places where there were previously no trees. The Negev desert for instance.

Its going to be a while before there is any definitive answer to the question. As far as plants doing better with higher CO2 just makes sense to a point, I'd bet that if CO2 reaches a critical mass it may have the opposite effect.

Where do you think we should get our energy? Solar and Wind will never be enough with our current technology.

That's quite the ironic statement you made there. There is always going to be a need for things like oil, natural gas and even coal but I also believe that if we put the money into R&D of alternative power sources that Kennedy did into the space program we can come up with something viable, sustainable and easy to manufacture that will greatly reduce our dependency of our current sources.

France is 70% Nuclear, do you believe the world should convert to Nuclear power?

... and our current demands. If we truly wanted to, we could re-engineer our world for drastic reductions in energy use. We could build more rail lines and haul our freight at a much lower energy cost. We can shift the balance of compromises in home design farther in the direction of 'energy efficiency' (sacrificing other qualities). We can build more light rail systems for public transit, and while doing so also make them pleasant to use and bicycle friendly.

If using fossil fuel for our energy is having or will have a negative effect based purely on 'excess CO2 being released into the atmosphere', we'd still not necessarily need to stop using fossil fuels altogether to address this issue. We might only need to slow down our net production to match the ability of natural systems to assimilate the CO2.

I'm on the fence about this one. On one hand its very clean, but on the other when things go wrong you never know exactly how damaging it will be.

I am a big proponent of hydrogen myself. Easy to manufacture and the by-product is H20.

Modern nuclear plants are very small, have no moving parts, cannot meltdown and need no maintenance other than refueling every 20 years or so. Bill Gates is working on an even better design that would require refueling once every 60-100 years.