The Crash Of The Climate Exchange - Investors.com

CCX's collapse was inevitable as both the enthusiasm for cap-and-trade — and the world itself — cooled. After the e-mail exchanges from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia reveled the extent to which global climate data were being manipulated to "hide the decline" in global temperatures, hopes for profiting off the scam with another scam evaporated.

Nor did the global recession create a hospitable environment for pushing another job-killing Kyoto-style agreement. People were lining up for jobs, not electric cars, and bills such as the House-passed Waxman-Markey suddenly were going nowhere. Carbon trading at CCX all but dried up as prices plunged from over $7 a ton in 2008 to just 10 cents as of August.

Like Dracula, cap-and-tax may yet rise from the grave. Anything can happen in the lame-duck session, and the EPA still conspires to regulate carbon and other emissions through the back door. Still, CCX's carbon-trading demise is reassuring evidence that eventually all houses of cards will collapse.