Silver Lining in Carbon Cloud for Trading Community
Bad news for the planet could be good news for the trading community.
The Financial Times reports that carbon emissions trading could become the world’s leading derivatives product as businesses in Asia and the US move to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and competition intensifies between exchanges.
According to Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission:
I can certainly see carbon becoming the biggest of any derivatives product in the next four to five years. And that would of course mean overtaking T-bills and any contract that is out there right now.
Meanwhile the Washington Post cites research indicating the world would have to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades in order to prevent dangerous global warming.
The findings suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.
Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message:
The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.
Oregon State University professor Andreas Schmittner, lead author of a Feb. 14 article in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said his modeling indicates that if global emissions continue on a “business as usual” path for the rest of the century, the Earth will warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
While natural cycles remove roughly half of human-emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere within a hundred years, a significant portion persists for thousands of years. Some of this carbon triggers deep-sea warming, which keeps raising the global average temperature even after emissions halt.
Last year’s report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said industrialized nations would have to cut emissions 80 to 95 percent by 2050 to limit CO2 concentrations to the 450 ppm goal, and the world as a whole would have to reduce emissions by 50 to 80 percent.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
