Taking a Bad Idea and Making It Worse

The bad idea: the Kyoto Treaty.

Making it worse: the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Remember back when the Kyoto Treaty was making the news? After it failed as a global initiative, environmentalists and social policy wonks made their way around the hurdle with a loophole called the Global Climate initiative. Well, that got carried one step further, and the Chicago Climate Exchange was created for actually buying and selling the pieces of paper intended to save us from climate change through excessive pollution.

You see the problem with this, don’t you?

One, the Kyoto Treaty (or Global Climate initiative, as it reincarnated into) isn’t going to solve anything if absolutely EVERYONE isn’t on board.

Two, the pieces of paper with pollution absolution on them don’t actually stop any pollution from occurring. Polluters still pollute with climate exchange trader blessing.

Three, like every other commodity, traders will buy and sell these things like corn, hog bellies, or even crude oil, jacking up the price so those who feel they need them the most can no longer afford to buy them--the comes the inevitable crash. This is just like the Beanie baby craze of the nineties—adults took a kids’ toy and made it an expensive commodity, bet the house on its appreciation, and wound up losing big in the end.

The only winners will be those who got in early, bid up, then got out at the top--just like real estate flippers and the current "stuck" homeowners left holding the depreciation bag. It may already be too late to profit here.

What really slays me is the hideous amount of puffery in this whole issue. Previously, I wrote an article on how to easily solve the supposed pollution problem by simply planting trees. It seems the issue has taken on a life of its own in the opposite direction: we’re not solving anything—we’re CAPITALIZING on it!

The Global Climate Initiative is one giant feel-good window dressing job on an old issue, and by making pieces of paper (pollution credits) into industrial blessings from heaven (or at least the EPA), putting a face value on them, then trading them on a newly-created marketplace solves nothing except where to put money for the sucker’s bet. In looking into it, I’ve found that the EU has become the biggest sucker of them all, falling for this scheme hook, line, and sinker.

Listening to a CNBC broadcast just yesterday, I found that small farms are also falling for this scheme, but for different issues: fertilizers, wastewater runoff, and diesel fuel use. So American farmers have been duped into buying absolution for activities they do as a normal course of business—putting food on our tables. Nothing else of their practices will change but the buying of credits to continue doing the same old thing.

The guest even encouraged individuals to get involved with the program. Other than helping to bid up the price of pollution credits, I just don’t see how individuals belong in this scheme--is someone going to buy credits for driving a diesel car, or maybe taking too long in the shower, or adding Miracle Grow to their houseplants?

Am I the only one who thinks this whole thing is nothing more than a tax on conscience, and that ingenious jackals from Chicago are gaining from the activities of hapless do-gooders? Once again, we capitalists have created something from nothing—much like the value of our money (backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, which is meaningless). All this may as well have the Pope's blessing and seal, for all the good THAT'LL do!

I'm hoping that one day we'll be able to include them in our retirement portfolios by petitioning for pre-tax purchase status, or IRA-eligible credits, or maybe an index will be formed by then. THAT’S how individuals can participate in this otherwise ridiculous scheme and tax on conscience.

Individuals who are sincere about saving the planet can just plant trees and learn to live with themselves for maximum effect and a lot less money.