Carbon Black Hole gets bigger ...deeper ....

The price for carbon closed last night 04 January 2007 at €4.88 - (remember it was in excess of €30 in April 2006!) a further collapse in this fantasy market - is lost on the Environment Minister Ian Pearson who upbraided Ryanair in a Guradian interview as "Ryanair are not just the unacceptable face of capitalism, they are the irresponsible face of capitalism" and also called it's founder and chief pilot the small, tallented but perfectly formed (and recently married) Michael O'Leary, as "completely off the wall" ... which anybody who can inspect his bank balance can see is evidently nonsense.

Carbon is released from fossil fuels, oil, gas, coal into the atmosphere, it with many other factors affects, the global climate, which is currently warming ever so slightly.

If you want to cut carbon emissions. Simply stop burning fossil fuels.... carbon trading does nothing of the sort .... it is merely a casino which enriches the financiers and their henchemen, accountnats, lawyers, money jugglers who designed it .... dazzling stupid politicians on the way, like Mr Pearson and his even dimmer predecessor Margaret Beckett.

There is another scheme that the politicians love called Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC's) which have put £1 Bn in the City's pockets to produce, so far, some 220 Mw of electricity from wind energy in the UK = roughly half the capacity of one of the nuclear reactors (480Mw) just closed down at Sizewell and Dungeness.... not forgetting Siemens (one of the world's largest engineering companies) getting £10.4 Mn of Lottery money to help build Burbo Bank off Liverpool.

Vietnam - Trading with the Communists - Fighting the War on Terror

Van Duc Vo (aka Nguyen Nha Trang) a US citizen who was born in Vietnam and said to be a member of a California-based terrorist group known as Government of Free Vietnam was quietly removed from a prison in Los Angeles on December 1 and flown to Thailand on Thursday after Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice signed an extradition order.

Vo, a US citizen, who came to the US in 1978, was arrested in October 2001 by the FBI at California's John Wayne Airport after returning from a trip to Bangkok. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry claim he was the ringleader of a plot to bomb the Vietnamese embassy in Bamgkok, Thailand. Two alleged accomplices Pham Nguyen Thanh Hien Si, (Tony) Anh Tuan Tran, and (Philip) Phan Thanh Binh were arrested at the time and are awaiting trial.

He is alleged to have placed a backpack full of explosives in front of the Vietnamese embassy and tossing a bomb over the compound's fence.

The bombs, weighing 6.6 pounds and 11 pounds, were supposed to be detonated by cell phones but failed to explode, according to Thai authorities, who charged Vo with "conspiring to use and using weapons of mass destruction during an attempted bombing."

Vo graduated as a civil engineer from California State University and helped form the Government of Free Vietnam an anti-communist Government in exile, in April 1985 with Mr. Chanh Huu Nguyen.

Readers will remember that President Bush was in Vietnam in November 18/19th for the 14th Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit (who will forget Bush & Putin in their nightshirts ?) . (See White House Video Bush meets US Vietnamese businessmen who want to do trade with Vietnam at Hanoi Stock Exchange 20/11/06) A Trade Bill had just been stalled by a vote on November 13th in advance of this summit (and the elections) granting permanent normal trade relations status to Vietnam, which has Asia's second-fastest growing economy after China. If approved, U.S. companies would benefit from lower tariffs after Vietnam joins the WTO at year-end, facilitating exports to a nation of 84 million people with a fast-growing middle class but it would hit Republican textile area constituencies in the South.

However on 7th December in the last gasp of the Republican-led 109th Congress, HR 6346, a package including "Permanent Normal Trade Relation" (PNTR) status for Vietnam, a trade preferences extension for Haiti and a duty reductions renewal for 4 Andean nations that have signed bilateral trade deals with the U.S. and over 100 developing countries was passed by 212 to 184 in the House.

The bill includes two main sections. The first one mentions grounds for granting PNTR for Vietnam, such as Bill Clinton's decision on normalization of relations with Vietnam, the bilateral agreement of May 2006, progress and commitments made by Vietnam during recent years, as well as the nation's cooperation on the POW/MIA issue. The second section calls for ending Article 4 of the Jackson-Vanik 1974 Trade Law (which required annual reviews of Vietnamese relations / trade). It also deals with bilateral trade concerns such as government subsidy, textile quota and so on. Vietnam will become a full member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Dec. 28.

Democrat Sen. Max Baucus said the bill "makes certain that more U.S.-made goods will get into Vietnam's markets."

The Vietnamese Leather and Footwear Association (Lefaso) has announced US exports now account for nearly 40% of Vietnam’s total footwear export turnover as EU controls have cut back exports to Europe., The sector had export earnings of US$ 3.55Bn. this year ahead of a target of US $3.4 billion set for this year.

For many years the US refused extradition of IRA terrorist suspectson the basis of legislation passed in 1972. A US / UK extradition Treaty was forced through which has allowed the famous Nat West 3 who were involved with Enron and have been extradited.

Less well known is the case of Jeremy Crook, a former European VP of US software company Peregrine Systems, was extradited to the US in September 2006 after being indicted by a US Grand Jury on fraud charges relating to alleged accounting irregularities at Peregrine.

Crook left the company in 2001 and was until recently running his own company, but was forced to surrender to US authorities under the UK's controversial extradition treaty with the US. The treaty allows the US to request the extradition of suspects without presenting any of the prosecution evidence in a court first.

Facing 85 years in prison when Crook voluntarily surrendered he was met my Marshals who escorted him in chains.

The Senate ratified the recent Treaty on November 7th - it is not expected that a flood of IRA terrorists will overhelm the UK authorities.

Ruth Lea exposes the folly of the ETS

Financial correspondents have been slow to realise what a colossal scam the EU Trading scheme for carbon is. Ruth Lea, is increasingly sceptical about climate change and the frenzy over the rate of change in the atmosphere's levels of carbon dioxide (Biog). She now appears to have finally discovered the fundamental flaw in the ETS system - it is not an objective system (although it claims to be) and it is operated by fallible and often venal human beings excited, by the propect of riches without having to do anything beyond and above shuffling pieces of paper and pressing keys on computer keybaords... and having lengthy lunches and visiting Wimbledon and Ascot and Glyndbourne in season.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph today she realises ..

" trendy international permit trading schemes .... require all Governments to act consistently, objectively and fairly if they are to work"

It is evident from Phase one, that the current scheme the ETS scheme is none of these. As a consequence of the combination of naivety (principally of Margaret Beckett) and the belief in their wonderful economic management of the mandarinate at the Treasury, British energy consuming industry - and that includes incidentally the whole of the National Health Service - has been well and truly shafted.

By the arbitrary application of carbon production limits The UK have effectively subsidised energy production in the rest of the EU by £500 by purchasing permits from them . The result has been say the DTI 25% of the rise in wholesale electricity costs between 2004/5 is due to the ETS and 75% by a rsie in raw materials - gas, coal. The ETS has cost any other EU nation a penny, not one red dime.

"To add insult to this injury" she writes," more permits were issued than under the ETS than were required to cut carbon emissions."

In Phase 2 she feels this will be corrected which will then force up EU costs who have increasingly got to fight China / India who are resolutelly chugging out Carbon Dioxide as they are not part of Kyoto - she reminds us that China is planning 560 new coal fired power stations between now and 2012.

Of the Clean Development Mechanism" she points out it's impact is negligible and that .." A comprehensive global trading system is most unlikely "

She argues that if there is to be a green mechanism taxes - argued for, for years will prove to be more effective and direct.

1. Taxes are direct , known, transparent and not volatile like trading schemes
2. There is no need to set arbitrary baselines and targets which can be poltically manipulated (and are)
3. The effect of such taxes can be offset elsewhere in the tax regime and are not simply another burden on industry
4. Such taxes can be co-ordinated with other energy taxes allowing greater harmonisation
5. Tax collection is straighforward using current proven mechanisms

She fails to mention that it would not enrich the army of lawyers, brokers, consultants, and other money jugglers nor provide them with a tithe.

Of climate change, she maintains that the arguments reeek of snake oil but that prudence must rule. Quite why the EU with 400 Mn people should be prudent and the remaining world population isn't, escapes mention.

Anyway the good news is that as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies people will listen to her. Maybe.