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Huge Phishing Attack On Emissions Trade In Europe
bratgitarre writes "A targeted phishing scam on companies trading with greenhouse gas emission certificates in Europe has reaped millions, Der Spiegel reports. By sending phishing e-mails to companies in Australia and New Zealand purporting to be from the German Ministry for Environmental Protection (German article, Google translation) the criminals obtained login credentials for companies owning polluting permissions. They then swiftly sold them to other polluters in various European countries. Damages are probably huge for a single incident, as 'one medium-sized German company alone had lost allowances worth €1.5 million ($2.1 million).' German federal officials, who can trace some of the transactions, claim that out of 2000 certificate sellers, seven responded to the scam."
Is there any reason it would be a bad idea, if someone has control over millions in assets, two people's login credentials should be required to confirm a transaction? It's bad enough to have someone responsible for that much money be foolish enough to fall for a phishing scam, but I should hope there is a low chance two people could run a company successfully but both fall for the same scam.
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Well at first yes, but isn't it a much bigger scam that people get to pollute, obviously they gain other wise they would have to pay to remove their waste pollution is free, rather than pay market value for access to the waste disposal they would use? You would complain about a company dumping waste on your lawn wouldn't you? If not then companies would dump everything they could, massively dropping their waste disposal costs. Unfortunately atmosphere is not easy to control access to, this is basically the classic example of a market failure and one of the few times economists advocate government stepping in and regulating industry by charging them for access to a resource they use but don't pay for. As long as it is free and there are no limits on what they can put in the atmosphere they will put everything they can to lower costs.
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It was such a complete failure that acid rain is no longer a looming problem... oh, wait.
Why do I feel this will be the exact same justification for the next environmental crusade after "looming AGW" fails to destroy the mankind?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
The goal is to reduce emissions. At least in theory, a market-based system for doing that, with a hard number of credits available, should succeed in limiting (or reducing) emissions. (Provided that you don't abolish other current regulation limiting emission in any given area.) Allowing people to buy and sell credits then rewards companies that are efficient (because they can sell credits) and penalizes companies that are inefficient (because they need to buy more credits.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It's mostly you. Every other commodity in this world is traded, including your odds of getting sick or having a car accident, so why not this one?
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them." [Condoleezza Rice]
The latest environmental threat: overphishing
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
Could the public interest in the environment be used or emission regulations with penalties. It is just a created commodity. It will motivate people to reduce in the beginning, but not overall and with reduced returns as more companies upgrade so they can sell their artificial commodity instead of buying it depressing the value of upgrading. The only real benefit is that it motivates instead of forcing companies to adopt better policy. A carbon tax is a much better idea as it can be adjusted by the government and be used to fund green R&D while motivating companies to upgrade their facilities.
You are ranting about free markets. Cap and trade is the government using a market to help put a value on regulatory certificates. It is a market.
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The US cap and trade on sulphur dioxide emissions was passed in 1990.
Overall, the Program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976.[15][16] However, this was significantly less successful than conventional regulation in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.[17]
S02 emissions were also falling from a peak in the late 1970s toward the 1990s, in other words the US S02 trading scheme was on an already declining path and was less successful than more direct European approaches.
S02 emissions trading was also local and not between countries which is another area where the proposed Green House Gas emissions trading schemes fall down. A corrupt county can just 'create' permits and then sell them. This has already happened with European and other schemes.
A tax would be a much more honest, much more transparent scheme than an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). ETS type solutions are attractive largely because politicians don't have to say they are a new tax, they can be easily gamed by giving out free permits and Enron style firms (including Enron itself before it went bankrupt) see a potential bonanza.
I'm kind of fond of a concept I haven't seen much mentioned -- CAT (Carbon-Added Tax). It's like VAT, but for carbon. The way VAT works is that at each step of the chain where value is added to a product, it is taxed based on the value added. Imports and exports are taxed based on their full value -- unless they've already paid VAT, wherein they're exempt).
CAT would work the same way. At each step of the way where the product gains embodied carbon (that is, either carbon that's emitted in the process of making it or ends up in the product in such a way that it will be directly emitted when the product is used), it's charged CAT.
The benefit of this to cap & trade is that it addresses the common question of, "What if India and China don't join us?" Well, then all of their goods get taxed CAT at the port. Since Europe would almost certainly join a CAT agreement if that was the standard, agreed-upon way to fight climate change, their goods -- having already paid CAT -- would not be taxed CAT upon import.
Ideally, the program would be structured as a "feebate", with all CAT tax revenue being compensated for by, say, cutting payroll taxes.
Really, though, you don't need any sort of carbon tax or cap to fight climate change in the biggest ways. Even charging for the other externalities would be enough. For example, the average coal power plant in the US causes about 3 1/2 cents/kWh worth of direct health-related damages to the economy, and the worst ones cause over 12 cents. This is from particulate matter, NOx, SOx, etc. The production tax credit for wind is only 2.1 cents/kWh. So if coal merely had to pay for its health costs, it'd rapidly disappear from our grid (primarily replaced by wind, natural gas, and possibly nuclear). Such a tax on health externalities would again be best structured as a feebate -- this time, as a subsidy for healthcare, weighted by county on a revenue-proportional basis (i.e., place with dirty power = pays the most tax = gets the most subsidy). You'd want to phase it in over 10 years so that there's time for the generation mix to adapt, of course.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Economists have modeled cap and trade versus the other alternatives (in a game theoretic sense) and the results are pretty much clear. Within the framework of a free market, there is no more efficient way of forcing companies to internalize their externalities.
Great. We have an optimal method of internalizing the CO2 externality. Now what is the impact of CO2 output in $$/kg so we can put this method into practice?
The problem I have with cap and trade is not that the method being used is inefficient, but that the value of the carbon credits is being set based on political motives. Rushing into cap and trade without an accurate carbon credit value estimate could end up costing far more than the effects of uncontrolled CO2 emissions. At this point, can we even be sure that increased CO2 output will cause a net loss of overall wealth?
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