European Carbon Markets Collapse, Making it Cheap to Pollute

I’m filled with malevolent joy! Schadenfreude!!! Europe’s carbon markets have collapsed, making dirty old coal cheap to pollute with again!

“Roll up for the great pollution fire sale, the ultimate chance to wreck the climate on the cheap. You sir, over there, from the power company – look at this lovely tonne of freshly made, sulphur-rich carbon dioxide. Last summer it cost an eyewatering €31 to throw up your smokestack, but in our give-away global recession sale, that’s been slashed to a crazy €8.20. Dump plans for the wind turbine! Compare our offer with costly solar energy! At this low, low price you can’t afford not to burn coal!” …

That there exists something called carbon trading is about all that most people know. A few know, too, that Europe has created carbon exchanges, and traders who buy and sell. Few but the professionals, however, know that this market is now failing in its purpose: to edge up the cost of emitting CO2.

The theory sounded fine in the boom years, back when Nicholas Stern described climate change as “the biggest market failure in history” – a market failure to which carbon trading was meant to be a market solution. Instead, it’s bolstering the business case for fossil fuels.”

LULZ! EPIC FAIL!!!

If a green fails in the woods, does it make a sound?

LOL UPDATE: The question should have been, if a carbon-sniffing satellite falls in the ocean, does it make a sound?

“(CNN) — A NASA satellite crashed back to Earth about three minutes after launch early Tuesday, officials said…

“We could not make orbit,” NASA program manager John Brunschwyler said. “Initial indications are the vehicle did not have enough [force] to reach orbit and landed just short of Antarctica in the ocean.”

“Certainly for the science community, it’s a huge disappointment.”

The satellite, which would have monitored greenhouse gases to study how they affect the Earth’s climate, was launched on a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 1:55 a.m. PT (4:55 a.m. ET)…

The $273 million satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, would have collected “precise global measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere” to help better forecast the changes in carbon dioxide “and the effect that these changes may have on the Earth’s climate.””

Well, the OCO is now the LOCA: Lost Oceanic Clam Attractor. It’s hard not to conclude that God hates climotards, as it is when one ponders all of the icy weather that accompanies Al Gore around the planet.