The Sunday Times reports:
The legitimacy of the $100 billion (£60 billion) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world’s largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors.
SGS UK had its accreditation suspended last week after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the carbon-trading scheme, or even that they were qualified to do so.
As we have noted before, among the many reasons carbon cap and trading is destined to fail is because auditing carbon emissions reductions accurately enough to support a carbon credit “market” is simply impossible. New Zealand Climate Science Coalition chairman Bryan Leyland explains:
So, to my knowledge, carbon trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy how much is being bought and sold, where the commodity that is traded is invisible and can perform no useful purpose for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated. … It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud and that is exactly what is happening all over the world.
In fact this is the exact same reason the economists who originally came up with the idea of cap and trade as a way to combat pollution believe that cap and trade is a terrible fit for carbon:
The first is that carbon emissions are a global problem with myriad sources. Cap-and-trade, he says, is better suited for discrete, local pollution problems. “It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally,” he says. “There are no institutions right now that have that power.”
The Wall Street Journal tracks down three of the economists who originally helped come up with the idea of cap and trade and finds that all three do not believe the system can be used to stop global warming. Then University of Wisconsin graduate student and now University of Wyoming professor outlines two problems with carbon cap and trade:
The first is that carbon emissions are a global problem with myriad sources. Cap-and-trade, he says, is better suited for discrete, local pollution problems. “It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally,” he says. “There are no institutions right now that have that power.”
Europe has embraced cap-and-trade rules. Emissions initially rose there because industries were given more permits than they needed, and regulators have since tightened the caps. Meanwhile China, India and other developing markets are reluctant to go along, fearing limits would curb their growth. If they don’t participate, there is little assurance that global carbon emissions will slow much even if the U.S. goes forward with its own plan. And even if everyone signs up, Mr. Crocker says, it isn’t clear the limits will be properly enforced across nations and industries.
The other problem, Mr. Crocker says, is that quantifying the economic damage of climate change — from floods to failing crops — is fraught with uncertainty. One estimate puts it at anywhere between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product. Without knowing how costly climate change is, nobody knows how tight a grip to put on emissions.
The WSJ continues:
Another economist, David Montgomery, advanced their ideas in the 1970s, converting their theories into the complex mathematical formulas to demonstrate that they weren’t merely an idea but were also economically feasible. Mr. Montgomery, too, is a skeptic of cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases. … “You get huge swings in carbon prices with a cap, which creates more volatility and uncertainty for business,” he says.
Volatility and uncertainty for business are just the beginning of the costs of cap and trade. The Center for Data Analysis studied the affect the current Waxman-Markey energy tax bill would have on our nations economy and found:
- A family of four can expect its per-year energy costs to rise by $1,241;
- Including taxes, a family of four will pay an additional $4,609 per year;
- Aggregate GDP losses will be $9.4 trillion;
- Aggregate cap-and-trade energy taxes will be $5.7 trillion; and
- Job losses will be nearly 2.5 million;