Must Read! Author Trevor Ward has a Finance background which gives him an understanding of the mechanics of Carbon Trading, and of course it’s all about the profit!
The Blood & Gore of Climate Science
By Trevor Ward
So how did the campaign start to brand Carbon Dioxide (CO2) “environmental enemy number one”? By using the same old propaganda ploy, that perception rather than truth is everything. Name your enemy, particularly one you can’t see, smell or taste and repeat it often enough so it becomes fact in the minds of the public.
The precursor to this was the establishment in 1992 of Agenda 21, a 21st century nonbinding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development, including atmospheric protection. One of the leading early players was Richard L Sandor who in 1992 served as an expert advisor to the UN on tradable entitlements for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. [1]
Powerful forces behind the scenes orchestrated events to set up and profit from carbon emissions trading worth billions of dollars. In 2000, the Joyce Foundation provided a grant to Sandor and North Western University’s Kellogg School of Management to develop carbon trading software. At the time, Barack Obama was on the board of directors of the foundation. A second grant was made in 2001 and Sandor joined forces with Former Vice President Al Gore and David Blood from Goldman Sachs and others to create the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). It was the only voluntary emissions reduction and trading system (ETS) in North America and included a foray in the Australian market via a company called Envex. [2]
Al Gore is the founder of the London-based Generation Investment Management (GIM) which purchased a huge stake in (CCX). They were the fifth largest shareholder. [3]
These players were not just ahead of the game. They wrote the rules and designed the playing field.
In 2006 Al Gore produced the ‘documentary film: An Inconvenient Truth, a campaign to “educate” citizens about global warming. Why is this happening you may ask? The obvious answer is $ money $ and when you understand the Cap & Trade scheme for emissions, it’s not about the environment and has everything to do with economic sovereignty.
This is a quote from Al Gore:
“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of
factual presentations on how dangerous it is [global warming], as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.” and… “Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.”
The Obama administration strongly pushed carbon emission policy by leaning heavily on congress and instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to declare CO2 a dangerous threat to human health, which lead to regulation of carbon emissions.
Back to the Basics
First we should go back to the basics and look at Carbon Dioxide (CO2). It is an odourless, colourless, and tasteless gas. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste by-product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant and all life-forms on Earth are carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient to life.
If one looks at the make-up of the atmosphere, the levels of the gases and how much is man-made, you might be questioning why CO2 is labelled such “a dangerous threat to human health”, The graph shows that CO2 contributes only 0.391% of total gases and only 3.2% of that is manmade. So of the atmospheric gases manmade CO2 represents only 0.0048%. [4]
In addition, I have spoken to a botanist conducting plant research in the Rangelands of Western Australia. He claims there are plants struggling to survive at the current CO2 levels, having evolved in much richer CO2 environments.
How Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) really work
The premise of an ETS is to encourage polluters to implement reduction programs or failing to meet targets (Cap on emissions), penalised by having to purchase carbon credits. It is commonly referred to in Europe and the US as “Cap & Trade”. It’s a carrot and stick approach, where companies with significant reductions can trade surplus reductions to other polluters who can’t meet their targets. Also an ETS can be expanded to allow additional credits to be created via Tree plantations and other carbon-sink mechanisms.
What you may not realise is that an (ETS) might be set at say a 5% reduction target, however the credits are open to manipulation by open market trading.
An ETS market starts when the Government sells the credits and uses part of that money to compensate low income earners as Corporations pass on the costs of carbon pricing in higher prices. Unfortunately it is the middleclass which shoulders the burden of the tax.
In reality the carbon credits will be snapped up by foreign mega Investment groups and hedge funds creating a shortage of credits and driving up the price due to market forces. Hence why shareholders of groups likes (CCX), (GIM) and Envex [5] were heavily invested in establishment of global ETS scheme.
Such global trading will shift money from the domestic economy and move it offshore and transfer the pricing to consumers. The carbon credits traded are just pieces of paper with no physical value, based on a gas that represents a tiny fraction of atmospheric gases. But the money comes from the real economy (your pockets). It does nothing for the environment and has the potential to wreak havoc on any domestic economy and socially re-engineer society as the middle-class is decimated from the carbon tax. You can see a scenario where greedy investment/ banking groups will be the first to buy up carbon credits and will force up the price (in an unregulated ETS market) via supply and demand. They will then lobby hard for an increase of the target. Let’s say 15% (3 times greater) further driving up the value of the credits and more of our ‘hard-earned’ disappears offshore and for what? The science is still out on the effects of global climate change. So be aware of the possibility that a full ETS (Cap & Trade) could be hijacked in this way and I feel that many people aren’t aware of the implications due to the complexities of these schemes. Even the introduction of a fixed-price scheme paves the way for a fully tradeable scheme in the future. Such a scheme implies a level playing field and a fully informed market. It is not the case when there are players in this market whose sole aim is not environmental but the pursuit of profit.
This aspect of an ETS was recognised by New Zealand where under their ETS the carbon credits can only be traded or surrendered domestically.
The Australian experience and US Connection
You might ask how this relates to Australia. [6] Prior to the introduction of a Carbon Tax in 2011 by the Julia Gilliard Labor Government, a Sydney based company was founded in 2008 called Envex and chaired by former NSW State Premier Bob Carr. The major shareholders of Envex were: Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) along with Climate Exchange PLC London (CEL) and Macquarie Group Limited (Note: Malcolm Turnball is an ex Macquarie Group director and a strong supporter of an (ETS)). Al Gore had a global stake via (GIM) and (CEL). So all one has to do is to follow the money to understand the agenda and ask: “cuo bono” and how it would affect Australia’s economy?
Envex was lobbying long before the carbon tax and/or (ETS) were considered. Both the Howard Liberal Government and the Rudd Labor opposition promised to implement an ETS before the 2007 federal election. Labor won that election, and the Rudd Labor government began negotiating the passage of an ETS through Parliament. The Opposition called for the vote on the ETS to be delayed until after the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen in December 2009. Unable to secure the Australian Greens Party support for the preferred model, the government entered negotiations with the new Liberal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and in the lead up to the Copenhagen Conference, developed an amended Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Following a party revolt by the Liberal Coalition members opposed to the Scheme, Tony Abbott challenged for the leadership and narrowly defeated Turnbull. Abbott described Rudd’s Emission Trading plan as a “Great big tax on everything”. In 2011 the Gilliard Labor Government introduced the Clean Energy Bill to include a price on carbon and later consider introducing an ETS.
Gillard announced a plan to legislate for the introduction of a fixed price to be imposed on “carbon pollution” from 1 July 2012 after having famously said before the election; “there will be no Carbon Tax under the Government I lead.” Thereafter the Coalition opposed the ETS outright and the government was unable to secure the support of other Senators for its (CPRS). In July 2014, after the Abbott Government won the election they spelt the end to carbon pricing by repealing legislation and in its place the government set up an Emission Reduction Fund, funded by taxpayers. Note that Envex no longer has a public presence with its website shut down.
The Status of Global ETS schemes
In the end notes is a link to a world map showing the countries that have or are considering an (ETS). [7]
The EU (including Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) now has the world’s only wide-scale cap and trade plan, which plays a pivotal role in its supposed commitment to reduce the emissions blamed for climate change.
The price of emissions permits tripled in the first six months of Phase I, collapsed by half in a one-week period in 2006, and declined to zero over the next twelve months. Such movements and the implied volatility raise questions about the viability of an ETS to provide long-term stable incentives to polluters. Since its conception, the EU ETS has been affected by high levels of policy uncertainty. As a result, the scheme has resulted in a rather adhoc and luke-warm response by regulated organistions. [8] Most permits are allocated for free but about half of permits were to be auctioned from 2013. More than 3,000 airline operators joined the scheme in 2012. Firms can buy a limited number of U.N.-backed carbon emission offsets if that works out cheaper than cutting their own emissions. [9]
The Northeast U.S. states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) was launched in 2009 and covers CO2 from power plants in nine northeast states. Target: Cut power sector emissions by 10 percent below 2009 levels by 2018.
In Japan the Tokyo metropolitan trading scheme was launched in 2010. It covers around 1,400 top emitters. Target: aims to cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels.
Conclusion
It appears again that “The Powers That Be” (TPTB) attempted to re-engineer society via a combination of an ETS and smart meters and it had the perverse potential to become a quasi-global currency since all things produce/consume carbon. However, due to low economic activity over recent years the schemes have fallen out of favour.
The Inconvenient Truth is that if you got an email asking you to join an ETS, you would think it was a Nigerian scam. All of the efforts to implement or kill off the ETS and carbon credits have done very little for the environment. The money, time and resources invested in this flawed system could have been better utilised to identify critical environmental issues
and action taken to resolve them. To claim CO2 as the number one risk to public health is a gross insult to the planet and all carbon-based life forms.
If you’re concerned about my credentials to discuss the climate science, there’s a list of 21 UN and US scientists who turned whistle-blowers on the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and man-made climate fears. Their comments are referenced in the end notes. [10]
The process was high-jacked from the beginning for the purpose of greed and social control via misleading science, bad press for CO2 with political agendas and straight out lies. It started out as “global warming” with CO2 named as the culprit and when the climate didn’t co-operate the (TPTB) switched to the “climate change” mantra. In addition, the original promoters of carbon credits and (ETS) have walked away leaving no legacy that says the planet is better off, except we now know the truth above these schemes.
Greater damage is being done by corporate-agri businesses, chemical companies and big pharma, but they have not been branded as a dangerous threat to human health. It’s time people woke up to what the real threats are to life on this planet and it’s neither the climate nor CO2.
End Note References
1 Richard L Sandor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_L._Sandor.
2 Forbes – Larry Bell – Blood & Gore https://tinyurl.com/y9tb7lwa
3 Al Gore & GIM https://tinyurl.com/y9trqwgc
4 Atmosphere Gases Information https://tinyurl.com/ycwha4wc
5 Envex https://tinyurl.com/y8tuqtgd
6 Australian Carbon Tax history https://tinyurl.com/jeqm9zv
7 Global ETS Map https://tinyurl.com/ybv3bg96
8 British Journal of Management article Teeter, Preston, Sandburg, Jorgen (2016) https://tinyurl.com/y7hc8dzc
9 EU Cap & Trade https://tinyurl.com/ybkcd3gc 1021 UN and US scientists turn on IPCC https://tinyurl.com/nxmvz73 Gilliard Cartoon by Urbanmonk https://tinyurl.com/ydejgzu9
About The Author:
Trevor Ward has published articles for New Dawn Magazine Australia, including:
• Sacred Geometry & Secrets of the Great Pyramid;
• Secret Message of Barbury Castle Pi Crop Circle 2008;
• Cracking the Canberra Code -The secret symbolism of Australia’s Capital.
• The Matrix Magicians – Who made who & who made YOU.
