Subprime Carbon [Scam]: Environmentalists Warn About the Next Big Bubble - Environmental Capital - WSJ

Just as sketchy home mortgages set the stage for the subprime mess in U.S. banking markets, sketchy environmental initiatives threaten to create a “subprime carbon” mess, environmental group Friends of the Earth warned today. If correctly valuing McMansions was tough, how hard will it be to properly price the environmental benefits of a Mongolian wind farm, or other measures meant to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? Carbon permits are still derivatives, after all.

That’s why Friends of the Earth is so leery of the climate proposals currently circulating around Washington. A cap-and-trade plan would create a huge new market in emissions permits at a time when Wall Street and Washington have their hands full figuring out how to police existing markets. One key element in all the climate proposals floated so far is the use of “offsets,” or the ability to purchase emissions reductions made somewhere else. As Friends of the Earth says in a new report, “Subprime Carbon”:

Given the lack of proven mechanisms to govern commodities, it is imprudent to so hastily create the largest derivatives market in the world and foist it upon a new and untested regulatory regime.

Unclear on the concept: She's racing hard, while allegedly living green | www.thatsracin.com

Leilani Munter is ready for a pit stop. If only she had the time.

First there was the big inaugural ball in Washington, where she danced with her friends in the Grateful Dead. Then it was on to Daytona for talks with potential sponsors. Next up: a pair of speaking gigs in southern California and a pre-Oscar party in L.A. co-hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Two days later she was climbing the core of a 252-foot wind turbine in Abilene Texas, no easy feat for an acrophobic, especially when her harness gets snagged and she looks down and tries not to panic.

Then in March, it was back to D.C. for a panel discussion on the environment alongside actress Darryl Hannah and speeches in Malaysia and Hawaii. Oh, and then there was her St. Patrick's Day wedding on a beach on New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula.

And she still hopes to zip a stock car around the track at Talladega Superspeedway this month.

Munter, 33, is a driven driver, a girl on a mission.

In a sport of barbecue-loving good 'ol boys, she's a self-described “vegetarian hippie-chick race car driver.” A resident of Cornelius, she’s an eco-activist and computer geek who maintains her two Web sites, including one called carbonfreegirl.com.