Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who made the trip to Copenhagen to tell delegates the American public is rejecting a national energy tax, opined that the UN climate change conference was a failure in USA Today. The market agrees with him. As expectations for a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fell, so did the price of carbon:
“European and United Nations carbon prices fell the most since February after the Copenhagen climate accord didn’t set targets that would boost demand for permits.
European Union carbon-dioxide allowances for delivery in December 2010 declined 8.3 percent to close at 12.45 euros ($17.82) on the European Climate Exchange in London. Today was the first day of trading since the summit concluded Dec. 19.
The agreed targets in the Copenhagen deal amount to a “bunch of negotiation ranges” that investors had already factored in, Trevor Sikorski, an emissions analysts for Barclays Capital, said in a phone interview after returning to London from the Danish capital. “It seems to be below even our modest expectations.”
The fall in the carbon market is very symbolic of the two week climate summit. Drummed up to be the next big climate treaty to globally reduce carbon dioxide emissions, Copenhagen was a failure, both procedurally and in its attempts to create a treaty. Although it will inevitably be spun as a significant step forward, it produced no legally binding agreement but instead an additional 40,500 tons of carbon dioxide. One friend put it like this: “I’ll believe global warming is an imminent threat to our health and the environment when those telling us to reduce our emissions start video-conferencing these summits rather than traveling on their private jets.”
Not only has the market responded to the failure of the Copenhagen conference, but the public is responding with skepticism to global warming – or the lack thereof. The American Enterprise Institute’s Karlyn Bowman summarizes four polls taken throughout the year that shows the public’s waning support for serious action on global warming. She offers the economy, Republicans rallying against Obama and the public’s confusion over the term “cap and trade” as reasons for falling support, and also highlights the public’s contempt for global warming alarmists continuing to cry wolf:
“People may simply be tired of hearing about the coming climate apocalypse. Only 28% in the new Harris poll knew that the subject of a major international conference in Copenhagen was climate change, demonstrating that although they’ve been bombarded with information by a sympathetic press, people just aren’t paying attention. In addition, media credibility is very low these days, and many Americans may simply be discounting what they read about climate change, especially after the recent climategate scandal. All in all, bad news for the activists.”
But good news for the economy and the market. Except the carbon market.
For all of Heritage’s work on Copenhagen, visit our Copenhagen Consequences Web site.
For those who thought the exposed emails from Britain’s University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit would come and go without much play, think again. Surely the skeptics and even the agnostics wouldn’t miss an opportunity to jump on such devastating revelations, but the fact is ClimateGate is having immediate and possibly long-lasting effects all over the world.
In Australia, the emails could literally shift political powers in the land down under:
“Australian Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has been replaced by a climate sceptic, Tony Abbott, after ten of its most senior politicians resigned over its support for the Government’s plans for fighting global warming. They were, it seems, fired up by the hacked communications from the University of East Anglia. But this is not the end of it. The sceptics coup is likely to lead to a general election before long, fought on climate change.”
In the UK, the head scientist at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) is stepping down:
“The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.”
Back in the United States, Penn State University will investigate the role of Michael Mann in ClimateGate, a professor at PSU and one of the climate researchers at CSU involved in the email threads:
“Penn State officials, who will not discuss the matter, are investigating the controversy. If anything requires further inspection, the school will handle it, a spokesman tells the Daily Collegian. A panel will read every E-mail leaked and determine if climate change critics have any ground for their accusations, the report says.”
And Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is calling for hearings:
“In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the environment committee, Inhofe said the e-mails could have far-reaching policy implications for the United States. Both Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency are taking action to curb global warming based on a report that uses data produced by the Climate Research Unit.”
The American public has already cooled off on the idea of combating global warming with costly cap and tax legislation; the exposed emails are bound to raise even more eyebrows. Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal offers another reason. It’s not necessarily about going green but more so about getting green:
“[T]he European Commission’s most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that’s not counting funds from the EU’s member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA’s climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA’s, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California—apparently not feeling bankrupt enough—devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative. In Australia, alarmists have their own Department of Climate Change at their funding disposal.
And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls “green stimulus”—largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes—of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.”
Time will tell how the rest of ClimateGate plays out, but it’s only been a short amount of time since the story broke and a number of significant events have emerged since and certainly more are likely to follow. Clive Cook says it best: “The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.”