Peter Bromhead: Carbon musings

Cartoon / Peter Bromhead

Americans seeking sidewalk alms don't use traditional begging containers anymore. They've modernised.

Starbucks' supersize coffee cups have replaced flat caps or tin bowls.

Sprinkling coins here and there, I asked a couple of down-and-outers about business. One elderly gentleman gloomily informed me: "It's the worst time I've seen on the street in 20 years." He's right. America is a different place these days.

All the money in my wallet was freshly printed. Over my entire visit, I didn't handle any crinkly, worn dollars. The American economy appears to be held together entirely by newly printed banknotes.

Bizarrely, the bittersweet odour from the ink reminds me of the smell of Superman comics my Aunt posted to me from the US during World War II.

Most Americans blame the housing market collapse for their woes.

"Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have a lot to answer for," they grumble, throwing in some dark utterances about the likes of the dubious Franklin Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae, who profited by some US$90 million from buying and bundling bad mortgages.

Franklin Raines? So, why does his name pop up when I learn that David Caygill and his review panel are debating whether to crank up New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme?

Well, when the Chicago Climate Exchange was introduced as the world's first legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for North America and Brazil, guess who purchased the actual trading mechanism and patented the process? Mr Raines.

Clearly, he thought he was on to a good thing - a specialist exchange trading a "synthetic financial product" created from thin air. In the co-creation of this wondrous science fiction, the CCX's founder, Richard Sandor, gleefully proclaimed that climate trading would prove to be "a US$10 trillion market".

Other major shareholders included Goldman Sachs and, yes, London company Generation Investment Management (chairman Al Gore).

Why bother recording this? Well, at some point late last year, these doomsday climate-banger investors suddenly sold all their shares to another half-asleep company managing commodities trading. A prudent decision, because the Chicago Climate Exchange - the world's spearhead in carbon credit trading - collapsed in November 2010.

Sandor, acknowledged as "The Father of Emissions Trading", made a cool US$98.5 million on the deal.

Meanwhile, carbon - once trading at US$7.40 per tonne - is now perceived as a worthless commodity.

Muse on that when you next pay "carbon" tax at the fuel pump.