Condoleezza Rice joins Siebel's secretive carbon startup (not a peep about Haiti)

[Liberal_in_LA]

I couldn't find where she's made one peep about Haiti

http://vator.tv/news/show/2009-12-30-condoleezza-rice-joins-stealth-carbon-startup

Condoleezza Rice joins stealth carbon startup
Secretive C3 lands $26M, high-profile politicians in the weeks following Copenhagen Summit

Technology trends and news by Matt Bowman
December 30, 2009 |

Climate change legislation has had a rough month. Climategate, large protests at the Copenhagen Climate Summit and the U.N.’s failure to forge a meaningful agreement there have put a damper on the climate-change public opinion crusade.

But that’s not stopping two high-profile Republicans from joining the board of a stealth startup that aims to manage emissions for corporations—a model that appears to bank on Cap-and-Trade legislation.

Three SEC forms filed over the last two weeks show former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former Senator and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham have joined the board of C3, a mysterious startup founded by Thomas Siebel, former CEO of Siebel Systems which was bought by Siebel’s previous employer Oracle for $5.7 billion in 2005.

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Cap-and-Trade legislation, whereby corporations are given a set number of carbon emission “credits” that can then be bought and sold, are in effect in Europe, and have been the subject of congressional debate in the U.S.. A climate bill that passed the House earlier this year calls for the creation of an economy-wide market for greenhouse gas emissions, but the issue has stalled in the Senate where health care and jobs stimulus concerns have pushed emissions regulation to the back burner.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Maybe I just don't get it,

but how is Cap & Trade, carbon emission credits, anything but pollution permits? If you are a big polluter, you purchase emission credits from someone who is a low polluter - neither company pollutes any less than they would otherwise. Wouldn't it be more efficacious to spend the money on managing pollution, instead?

What am I not getting here?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. because by making the costly investment in controls

more affordable, you sell more controls. Which lowers the unit prices for pollution equipment, which drives more sales, which increases the net gains in pollution reduction.

When wall street sees two competing companies, one with older polluting equipment, and one with identical products, but lower unit costs and additional credits because of cap and trade, which will be more profitable?

[belpejic]

5. Cap and trade is basically a tax on carbon

where the "market" rather than the government sets the price (but if it gets enacted you better believe that the government will strongly influence the price, especially so that market participants won't lose money).

Many people argue that it's more expensive than a straight tax because of the transactional costs involved with operating the marketplace. Basically the government spends money to administer and enforce key parts of the law/resulting regs and finance firms earn fees by speculating and hyperactively trading. Sound familiar? So simple even Condi gets it.

[Joanne98]

2. Cap and Trade is just another casino.

[zazen]

4. because the best shoe sales are in January--first things first!