"No surprise there", I hear you say.
It has been reported on euractiv.com that up to two million permits have gone missing and been sold on the spot market: Great carbon theft may have netted 14m of permits. This is not the first such problem, but it is the biggest so far. It was caused apparently by phishing scams which have gathered passwords necessary to trade the permits. The seriousness of it has prompted the shutdown of the national carbon registries and hence the ETS itself.
In the same item, it was reported that "Trevor Sikorski, director of carbon markets and environmental products research at Barclays Capital, predicted that the closure could cost carbon traders around 70m per week." To put it another way, a scheme which seems both ineffective and vulnerable to serious fraud is providing profits to traders of 3.5bn a year. All of this, ultimately, is a cost paid by consumers and taxpayers.
Carbon Trading Scheme is a scam by itself, its just another Index added to the market for speculators to make money out of with no real logic behind it to actually combat global warming. Unfortunately it was suggested by environmentalists who in recent years only caused misery for 3rd world developing nations. It was a sad day in Australia when they decided to adopt this scheme, i really hope this scheme is dissolved soon as it only serves elites and the rich to make more money.
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