Carbon Expo Climate Market Event

A few years back, around 2006 I believe, I was at the big global climate change market event called Carbon Expo in Cologne Germany. There the worlds climate change Illuminati, and those selling their wares outside the temple (me included), were gathered to talk over the world of climate change in the context of the growing trade of carbon offset credits and new climate action technologies. The volume of sales of carbon credits was sure to reach or even exceed €100 billion Euro that year.

While inside the speakers rooms there was the drone of great but way too much information, the real action and place to make connections was on the trade show floor. I was roaming the booths of the trade show and met a Frenchman at the ECF booth. ECF stands for European Carbon Fund and it was/is a major player in those markets.

The Frenchman and I got to talking and I offered him my story of how this crisis the planet is facing is most immediate and most terrible in the oceans. This was and is a fact that very few seem to understand. Anyway the guy listened and chatted with me patiently and I thought highly of him, not everyone listens to my views on this topic. And he was very important guy in the world of climate, managing hundreds of millions of Euro in his green/black world.

Later as the conference went on and on over the course of a week the Frenchman came back to me and asked me if I would join him in a glass of wine so we might talk more. I took him up on this and off we went and began enjoying a really great red wine which he ordered. The French really do know wine.

Imagine the 10 lost Amazon’s being regenerated in the oceans around the world. Those restored ocean Amazon’s become once again the most powerful natural solution to our CO2 crisis and save our blue planet and providing food for all. – click to enlarge.

I told him how the biodiversity of the oceans is so great that it is like a rainforest as an ecosystem where untold cures for disease surely are there undiscovered and there for the looking. But that soon it could be too late.

I told him of how ocean pastures are just like pastures on land. The health and abundance of the pasture dictates the carrying capacity for life whether that life be cows or fish. I told him of how Walt Whitman said famously, “All beef is grass” and how I am saying “All fish is plankton.”

Most importantly I told him about how it was almost certain that the oceans could be so easily and inexpensively restored. He understood that the solution I proposed was literally dirt cheap!

But what my friend wanted to talk to me about was an aspect of my story that was important to him.

He said, “Look Russ, you and I both love the ocean and all the life in it. Let’s agree to that. Ever since I was a little boy and growing up worshipping Jaques Cousteau I have loved the ocean. But if even 10% of what you say is true about replenishing its iron and bringing those ocean pastures back to life, they will manage so much of the problem of carbon on the planet that you will destroy our climate market. Because of this I must oppose you.

But I want to tell you is that is what I must do as it is my job, my heart hopes you will succeed.”

What has happened to his market since we talked was that the market collapsed from its seemingly unlimited inflationary character to a more modest one. At present day prices the world needs large volumes of low cost carbon offsets. The market which was a bubble market packed to the gills with derivative bundles of carbon offsets watched that bubble burst and not a few of the derivative traders ended up being sequestered more securely than the derivative carbon they had been pumping and dumping.

Perhaps it is time to save the world and make a little money on the side.