John Robson does a fine job reminding us that real environmental progress comes from capitalists:
It’s opera. My wife is listening to opera while jogging. The heroine will, one assumes, come to a tragic end. But the batteries won’t, because she’s using a digital player. On which, I trust, I can record the sound of environmentalists applauding the technological advances capitalism brings.
We’ll wait for the applause, but somehow I’m just not hearing it.
John Robson’s going to wait a long time for that applause. Environmentalism isn’t about the environment, its about attacking capitalism.
Exactly Phantom, and too many leftover jobs are now at stake to drink this environmental slurpy all at once.
John Robson always has been miles ahead of the inbred pack of media clones in the east. But the usual howls will emenate from the usual cave of public sugar teat suckers namely the cbc ndp leeberals, about saving the 5 billion year old planet. How can anyone be stupid enough to look at the likes of Dion and Layton and vote for these progress stiflers. Well done John, but can the average ontario resident even read, let alone understand it.
This guy hits a home-run with his article. If all the socialist enviro-wackos could loose the idea that to use less energy and pollute less we have to lower our standards of living and live in straw huts and crap in a wood chip toilet/composter……but that we can actually increase our standard of living, spend less money on energy and make money while doing it is way over their heads.
Well, DUH!!!
The fact is that many of the environmentalists you and your little pals pillory on a daily basis are capitalists, and have built more companies and created more wealth than any of you right-wing armchair ideologues ever will.
Robson is yet another perfect example – he spouts and spews (and in this case his basic thesis happns to be correct), and mouths all of the right things about the private sector, yet like so many of his ilk, has never and likely will never actually do any of the things he speaks of and will rail againt others who DO oerate in the private sector, create wealth, but who don’t talk the talk so favoured by the likes of you and your little pals.
It is why none of you seem to be capable of understanding the operation of a market mechanism like the CDM/carbon market. How could you? You don’t practice, you only preach.
It is to laugh.
Envirowatermelons don’t care how much better stuff is for the environment if it doesn’t impoverish people, expand government and give them control.
They’re luddites. Foolish luddites with their fairy tales of times when man “lived at one with nature” which is another way of saying that we used to be at the complete mercy of nature.
Exhibit A is their “native” fetish. They seem to think that Natives CHOSE to limit their impact on the environment. How stupid can you be? Natives didn’t have the ABILITY to have a greater impact as they didn’t have the technology. This is why their population was sparse, their people decrepit and their lives short. If you look at them today, they’re jack-lighting endangered polar bears from the back of their ski-doos and trying to profit from logging and fishing like the evil white man. The idea that natives are fundamentally different than us is laughable. It’s racism plain and simple. It assumes their enfeeblement and inferiority.
Sure, technology is a double edged sword and we need to reduce the destruction of our planet but we will only accomplish this through the capitalist system. Period.
It was greedy capitalists who invented the catalytic converter. It was greedy capitalists who developed the modern windmills. It was greedy capitalists who invented the smoke-stack scrubbers. It was greedy capitalists who will invent all future technology that will improve the world.
Great article. Thanks for posting it.
canadian_2
You are an economically illiterate halfwit.
Carbon trading schemes are not free-market. It’s a scheme that uses the language of the free market to disguse the fact that it is nothing more than a fraud.
If you tax environmentally harmful behavior and give tax cuts with the money (so that the plan is revenue neutral,) the market would take advantage of the situation to their benefit by changing their behavior.
Carbon trading market is not a market. It’s a fantasy which corrupt regimes (like France) use to corrupt the financial markets and reward rent-seeking corporations at the expense of the general public. There is no way to keep this artificial system honest as the Eurotrash are illustrating. It also doesn’t work to reduce the behavior that it is designed to curb. It’s a shell game. The problems with even the theory is obvious to anyone who isn’t a foolish leftard.
canadian 2, a wacko nutjob carbon trading scam does not qualify as progressive unless you stand to profit from sheeple dumb enough to fall for commie wealth redistribution.Wow thats a long sentence.
Reminds me of the no-shows/no-works on the Sopranos – the mobsters get paid for doing no work.
Liberal/Socialist dogma teaches us that it is profit that is evil.
Conversely there isn’t a human activity on the face of the planet that can’t immediately become blessed through communist altruism.
Selling a kidney = evil
Donating one = act of piety
Did anybody notice that the EU admitted last week that the plan for alternate fuels was not as environmentally-friendly as was being portrayed?
Of course, economically illiterate halfwits like canadian_2 would ignore these admissions that anybody who’s been following the story for more than 10 minutes would have known about at least by last summer.
The Euroweenies, in their haste to prove they can build an alternate universe to the US through state intervention, have fallen flat again and proven to be yet another expensive lesson for European taxpayers.
Oh, they’re going through some temporary glee right now watching the US go through one of its correction phases.
Curious, though, how a great majority of scientific and technological advances come from the capitalist system of the US.
Golly Warwick – please enlighten us further with your infinite wisdom.
Perhaps you did not note that I said it was a “market instrument” not a “free market instrument”. There is a difference, but likely lost on the likes of you.
Scarcity is created, through regulation in this instance, and the market determines the most efficient means of addressing it. Quite simple, though you might need a little help from a grownup.
I am sure the many companies I have financed would be highly amused that I am termed a “leftard”, though I suppose considering the source it might be the subject of some hearty laughs…
Maybe you and “Phantom” can open a lemonade stand together – you will learn a lot about this “private sector” you speak of, and it will be lots of fun.
Oh, great canadian_2, please enlighten us with your vast knowledge of the markets. If your wealth is so vast, why are you trolling at a right wing blog?
MORON!
canadian-2. Since, as a capitalist, you know that facts and data are important, could you please inform us of the data base of your comment:
“The fact is that many of the environmentalists you and your little pals pillory on a daily basis are capitalists, and have built more companies and created more wealth than any of you right-wing armchair ideologues ever will.”
Specifically,
Who are these environmentalists that we ‘pillory on a daily basis’?
How many is ‘many’?
What are their capitalist companies?
How much wealth, specifically, have they created?
What is your data base that enables you to conclude that they have ‘created more wealth..”?
Oh and I realize that you are confining your population only to ‘rightwing armchair ideologues’. I presume that is a reference to those who are retired or? Does that mean that your data base excludes those of us who are active ‘rightwing capitalists’?
One other thing. As pointed out, you don’t seem to have an understanding of ‘carbon trading’. Are you aware that it has nothing to do with benefitting the environment – by reducing either emissions or pollution? Do you know that?
Are you aware that it is just a money trading process, which some of us, alas, call a scam because it operates under the rubric of actually doing something FOR the environment. But it doesn’t.
In reality, X-nation, which has no intention or means to reduce its emissions, ‘purchases’ what can be Car-Salesman defined as ‘Clean Air’ from Y-nation, which doesn’t have as much industrial productivity. The MiddleMen, who run this, er, scam, take their big hefty bonus from this transaction.
They then pass on the rest to Y-nation, which uses it to build polluting and emitting factories. I’m sure you know that the G-77 countries have declared their refusal to commit to any limits on emissions or pollution to their new factories.
Overall, the emissions and pollution of the planet go UP, UP, UP. And the middlemen get rich and richer and richer!
And the industrial nations, instead of using that money to develop new techologies for clean air, don’t develop those new technologies.
Now, Canadian-2, we’ll wait for your answers. And please, no insults, no smears. Just the facts will do.
Simply google biofuel +hunger.
Law of unintended consequences?
Canadian_2…
the fact is that there are a lot of people on SDA that actually DO understand a market mechanism like a carbon market, and also understand that a carbon market will not help you towards your goal in its present form.
The main reason for this is because as long as people/companies/regions receive credits for doing absolutely nothing more than they were going to do anyways, then the market itself is tainted. I recently bought an SUV, however even WITH normal driving habits, my carbon footprint is less than the average Canadian’s. Should I be punished for that? I use CFLs, I wash in cold water, I take showers, keep my thermostat at 18C, live in only as big of an apartment as I need… does that mean I should get carbon credits for doing all those things to offset, even though I was doing them before I bought an SUV? This seems to be the problem that most here are running into and object to… not the use of a market to make the reduction, but the tainting of that market by giving credits to those people who do nothing to earn them in the first place.
People. Quit trying to communicate anything to the troll. He is obviously a bulls@#$ artist, trying to get a reaction.
If he was a capitalist or financier, do you really think he would be here trolling?
REALITY CHECK….OVER
It is why none of you seem to be capable of understanding the operation of a market mechanism like the CDM/carbon market…
Hey, economic clueless person, that’s an artifically created construct. A free market mechanism, hardly.
In an interview with NRSP Executive Director, Canadian Tom Harris, on San Francisco-based World Affairs Monthly;
http://www.nrsp.com/news.html
Tom made some interesting comments. He said Radio Hosts will often allow the truth to be known, when it comes to environmental issues. But when he asks Print Media, TV types, why the cover up, he sometimes receives a — ya ya, we all know it is all a Hoax. But our advertizers would not like it. There are a lot of $$s being made off of scaring people with End-Of-The-World-Kyotoism.
And not just Al Gore. See who is in the picture here associating, and more, with big Al —
http://www.newsweek.com/id/71011
One thing for sure. When the Hoax ends, as they all do, the Snake Oil Salesmen will always be left high-n’-dry. Except, in Big Al’s case — not all that “dry” !
And the iPhone is a good example of “green”. For a bad one think Bio-fuel.
Bio-fuels are only one part of advancing energy changes. And a short term stop gap measure at that. Food cost disruption is a side effect, yet enterprisers will iron that out in time.
Somebody mentioned stack scrubbers and catalytic converters. So there are many good *clean tech* devices.
It takes capitalist intrepreneurs to think up ways to put that stuff to work.
Cats. on cars has been done, but *clean tech* on coal-gen plants has not.
I suggest India, China, and the USA sign a Clean-Coal standards agreement. It*s only the world*s worst pollution. Not a very effective idea?
There are experts commenting in this thread who have the foolproof method to see 60,000 coal gen plants retrofitted with *clean-tech*.
This aught to be interesting. = TG
The carbon trading scheme based on the markets. ie stock, bond money etc. was dreamed up by stockbrokers. Hardly the a cabal of left wing enviromentalists. The first market was run buy Cantor Fitzgerald. The largest Agent in the world for government debt. Primarily US debt.
C2 is an numskull.
I’d like to use the opportunity of this article to plug for Julian Simon’s work (RIP). His work absolutely demonstrated Robson’s point in the article. I recommend his book “The Ultimate Resource 2”, although “It’s Getting Better All the Time” is a better fit with Robson’s article.
Just a curious note Cantor Fitzgerald took heavy loss of life on 9/11 their offices were in the WTC.
Canadian_2
You misunderstand both the concept of a market mechanism and simple economics.
Scarcity is not created. Scarcity is the concept that there is not infinite resources available. While a shortage can be created, scarcity is your starting point. A shortage is the imbalance of supply and demand. It requires too much demand, not enough supply, or both.
Regulation can be used to curb behaviour that the society wants to minimize but setting up faux-markets without a market’s checks and balances is a fraud – and totally ineffective at achieving it’s stated goals.
The problem with carbon trading schemes is that it doesn’t function as a market, can’t be policed and doesn’t result in reductions in emmissions and enriches scummy, rent-seeking freinds of the ruling rigime. It’s perfect for France and the UN’s rogue gallery but useless for the environment.
And I’ll put my CFA charter against your sociology degree any day.
Jeff Cosford
That’s what I refer to when I say “rent-seeking.”
It’s companies trying to take advantage of government regulation to make windfall profits not available under normal circumstances.
The enviro-twits want a carbon market because they don’t understand markets. Trading firms want Carbon markets because they can get rich off it. They don’t care that they’re trading real money for snake-oil. They just want to get rich.
People think that corporations are always in opposition to intrusive government. That is not the case. Corporations are self-interested in the same way socialists are. They will welcome government interference which benefits them. They’ll take a profit from anywhere they can get it.
Consequently, Al Gore and his fraudulent friends are pushing this faux-market hard. They also own the companies that are trying to do the trading. I guess profits are bad when the evil corporations are making it but not when it’s saint Al the goracle.
Ya Warwick I agree. Actually this is what I think happened. During the Clinton administration a guy by the name Robert Rubin was appointed Treasury Secretary. Now Rubin comes from Goldman Sachs’s. The most powerful broker on the steet. And for the longest time these guys meaning all brokers had sown up every market conceivable except one and that would be the government.
Brokers bread and butter is commission and all though they handle government debt, it doesn’t pay squat.At least in terms these guys a used to. As for money markets well the Government has its own traders the Federal Reserve soooo.
So Rubin goes to Washington and bumps into the Goreacle thrashing around the White House looking for a reason to exist. He and Rubin get together and Rubin makes a phone call.
Now you have to understand the culture in a brokerage firm these guys got money money money and so they can hire brains brains brains. Goldman Sachs has more MIT mathematicians, (Phd’s). running around than MIT has mathematicians. Probably more than all the Universities in the US.
Anyway Rubin makes a phone call and says you know how we been trying to get commission from the government well we got a guy on our side now the Goreacle.
So throw a box of Granola bars into the basement and see what the egg heads come up with.
Voila. Carbon markets.
This however is all speculation on my part but what the hey.
canadian-2. Why don’t you answer our questions? After all, you posted here, claiming a great deal of knowledge about markets, envt, capitalism etc. When we asked you a few questions – why have you run away?
Oh, and how many companies have you financed? How do you finance them? How did you get your capital?
Thanks for answering our questions..or..are you still running, running..running away…
Warwick – nice posts. Yes, Al Gore is in the middle of this Yet Another UN Scam. You’d think the world would have learned from ONE of the previous UN scams, Oil-For-Fraud. But, since the UN is one giant money laundering agency….
The Goldman Sachs crew are all high-profile Democrats, too.
Millionairs are right, billionairs are left. I figure because the people who have so much money they couldn’t lose it all are people who lose their perspective. They lose the value of money and gain entry into the crowds who have never respected money as they’ve always had too much of it and never had to work for it.
My first bay street job was trading but it was equities and options. The institutional bond guys drove the big BMW’s…
After my CFA I moved into portfolio management. Better pace, better pay (this week notwithstanding…) Although my friends brother is a market maker at Cannacord who’s raking in over $1mm a year. Nice for a 7-4:30 job with no weekend or holiday work…
Thats a really good way to put it Warwick, it’s funny but oh so true.
Me, I was just a run of the mill broker but got tired of trading other peoples money so went out on my own and never looked back. I’m a market Technician MTA. (Read graph’s.)although haven’t finished the CMT designation yet. I wrote so many dam coarses as a broker that I still write em in my sleep. It’s real hard to get excited about it when your making money and no one to answer too.
So now it’s No hassle and no whinning or complaining and dam if the client doesn’t always do what he’s supposed to. I happily spin around paper in the morning and have nap after the market closes. Left Coast. No fuss no Muss.
Canadian 2.
A UK study of 25,000 people has shown that the worst polluters on the planet are ……..what for it…. people who claim they are enviro warriors.
I don’t give a rat’s @ss whether you believe it or not but my company developed a construction related product that reduced fuel consumption by as much as 50% and reduced North American fuel consumption in its application by a several million gallons a year.
Yet I have had twits like you preach to me about paying a few hundred dollars a year more for wind power all while driving a big SUV.
The driver to use our product was cost savings and not some ripoff and corrupt carbon trading system.
All A-holes like you do-nothing-know nothing hypocrites do is granstand and except preach to those that do.
And check out some of the new super efficient woodstoves out there, at 80% eff. wow!–steel is carbon based so the karbonks can claim partial credit, right? i bet al gore invented the woodstove.
I think canadian_2 is but a small time stock investor , a few grand into a couple of stock promos is hardly a financier. more like a fiancee to the whores of lieberalism.
warwick. you wouldnt be the feller with the software finding the optimum places to put windmills would you? something strangely familiar about your rhetoric and cadence.
The only people that need to worry about the Carbon Market are those that are Long (own shares) The Short Sellers will love that market
If you want to go long there must be no existing or emerging technology that decreases the market value over time. A nuclear 15-year plan would encourage short selling from day one.
Carbon Trading is DOA
Just a comment on the democrat primaries.
The 9th circuit is in full retreat after Hillary(Teachers Union) filed suit in Nevada. The Good guys are coming out for Obama, and kicking butt.
BTW: If the 9th circuit is dissolved, as has been suggested many times. The Global warming boys will be looking for a new home
The MSM keep saying that endorsements don’t matter but that is absolute BS. The “POWER” shift is on the right (Obama) and nothing but sleaze on the left. (Taking of the names) Its good for America
If Obama & Edwards join after Nevada, Hillary & Bill will need to take their freak show home.
Canadian_2 can hardly claim to be a financier if he can’t even suss-out that the whole carbon trading business is the newest version of the Ponzi scheme. Or he’s about as crooked as they come. Makes no difference. And dude, before you spout your qualifications again, let me spout mine…. I’m a professional accountant and can smell a fraud from quite a distance. You’re one, Al Gore is one and carbon trading is the biggest one ever
Hold it Anon. Remember now, us fold here at SDA are all dumbass, mouth breathing knuckle draggers. Any leftard with a BA in basket weaving HAS to be smarter than any of us. Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
See. I am so stupid I cannot even spell folk.
Phillip Shaw Ja18/7:04pm said . .
**Carbon Trading is DOA**
Not very likely. Warwick and Jeff have made some good points and . . .
Consider the third largest carbon trader; Gemco,
2007 Contact Information Telephone 604-731-4666 Postal Address PO Box 42082, RPO Oak Bay, Victoria, BC V8R 6T4 An Introduction to GEMCo.
Oak Bay is a a haven of the very wealthy.
Jeff says, ** I happily spin around paper in the morning and have nap after the market closes. Left Coast. No fuss no Muss.**
Imagine GEMCo traders doing just that from some penthouse computer den in ritzy Oak Bay.
CBC gushing about the virtues of Gemco. . third biggest buyer of carbon credits.
gemco.org/
This has the smell of chairman *MO* to it. Here*s the compexity of the petro scheme.
gemco.org/petro.htm
The gushing sounds were so liberal some how. Just gives you that creepy rip-off feeling.
Funny how they have *Big* USA based accounts while located in Victoria.
Guess carbon trading is not DOA, unless you check into those accounts and expose something smelly. = TG
See, kingstonlad, although you retired in the home station of the RCCS, I won’t take you to task for it… some of my best friends are linemen (grin). As a fellow knuckle-dragger, albeit a zipperhead, beers and cheers, mate, especially on a Friday night
I was not referring to you, my friend, but our troll, the wannabe capitalist.
Cheers back to you!
I should post this YouTube video on a Liberal site… like CalgaryGrit, where the leftists will take it in the serious Vice Presidential vein it deserves. Carbon credits….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRJFKb2AD_8
This is serious stuff!!
CalgaryGrit, BTW, would convert to a very good conservative and he may eventually do so. = TG
It was greedy capitalists who invented the catalytic converter…It was greedy capitalists who invented the smoke-stack scrubbers.
Posted by: Warwick at January 18, 2008 11:24 AM
Yeah, and they did it all out of their heartfelt concern for the environment…no, wait a minute…they did it because it lowered the cost of the product and increased profits…hmm? Actually, the only reason these two devices (and virtually every other emissions control device) were created is because it was forced through legislation.
It was greedy capitalists who fought tooth and nail to avoid pollution controls on cars and factories; it was greedy capitalists who pressured corporate friendly governments (ie. Reagan) to lower fuel economy standards for cars; it’s greedy capitalists who clearcut our forests; it’s greedy capitalists who leave toxic waste for others to deal with, etc.
Go drink some more koolaid, loser.
Here’s an interesting approach
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/51
[quote]It was greedy capitalists who fought tooth and nail to avoid pollution controls on cars and factories; it was greedy capitalists who pressured corporate friendly governments (ie. Reagan) to lower fuel economy standards for cars; it’s greedy capitalists who clearcut our forests; it’s greedy capitalists who leave toxic waste for others to deal with, etc.[/quote]
Iberia,
The USA does not have unfettered Capitalism, its small C with rules & boundaries
The Stock market has the most stringent rules!
That is why Lord Black was invited to the Biker’s Pajama party.
Wake-up! the world has moved on!
Phillip:
I’m not sure what your point is…mine is that capitalists are not interested in saving the environment if it lowers profits.
[quote]I’m not sure what your point is…mine is that capitalists are not interested in saving the environment if it lowers profits.[/quote]
Why not visit the former USSR or China and compare enviromental standards/conditions.
The value of a tree as compared to feeding undernurished people is not unique to capitalists.
The worst thing we could do to china is provide them technology that displaces people, the best thing is a market for their goods and then they may be able to afford the Cost of environmental issues.
Capitalism is an enabler of enviormentalism
Thats my point!
“Capitalism is an enabler of enviormentalism”
Exactly. I remember being young and uninformed, and I thought that controlled economies, like the Eastern Bloc, would preserve the environment because they didn’t have those nasty profit seeking capitalists.The fall of the Soviet Union soon dispelled that foolishness when a multitude of environmental disasters was revealed. Corporations have to be good environmentalists because their potential consumers can get angry and stop buying their products.
I wonder if Lavrenty Beria has noticed the air quality in China?
Phillip: Best B*tch slap I’ve seen in a long time. I can picture the smoke wafting from Iberia’s ears as it tries to think of a come back that isn’t pathetic.
canadian2…I’m a little late here,but please tell me how us sending money to China reduces CO2 already produced? That’s like saying your mother will send money to your dad for allowing her to use his sperm,but you are still here! Nothing accomplished!