Thursday, April 29, 2010

SCANLON: Obama's Goldman game - Washington Times
In 2004, the Goldman Sachs Foundation shelled out $35.5 million to liberal nonprofit groups, mostly to environmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Society. There were no recorded contributions to conservative or free-market public-policy organizations. None.
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Meanwhile, Goldman supports mandatory government limits on carbon emissions and probably would reap huge profits from a cap-and-trade emissions-control policy. In 2006, Goldman paid $23 million to purchase a 10 percent interest in the Chicago Climate Exchange, the only U.S. exchange that conducts trading in carbon offsets.

Experts say the U.S. carbon-emissions market could be worth $1 trillion annually by 2020, but trading in carbon offsets won't generate much profit unless the federal government forces corporations to participate in the trading scheme. It's in the interests of Goldman, which as of 2007 had committed at least $1 billion to "carbon assets" alternative-energy projects, to lobby hard for carbon controls.

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