Before you decide – you should really read this! Here is an excerpt:

Apparently the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is at the center of the world carbon trading markets – all currently voluntary. Here’s some history on CCX from its website:

Welcome to CCX: We are a financial institution whose objectives are to apply financial innovation and incentives to advance social, environmental and economic goals through the following platforms.

Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.

Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFE) is a landmark derivatives exchange that currently offers standardized and cleared futures and options contracts on emission allowances and other environmental products. CCFE is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCX.

And from its “History” page

The institution that is today the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) began with a grant in 2000 from the Joyce Foundation, a leading philanthropy based in Chicago known for its innovative approach to public policy issues, which supported the inception, creation, feasibility and design of CCX. The support was provided as part of a series of special Millennium grants made by the Foundation to catalyze, support and reinforce ideas, concepts or institutions of lasting intergenerational significance.

An initial grant of $347,000 was made to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University to provide technical support to Dr. Richard Sandor and colleagues to examine whether a cap-and-trade market was feasible in the U.S. to facilitate significant greenhouse gas reductions, using a voluntary regional Midwest model from which national and international lessons might be drawn.

So CCX was established through a grant from the Joyce Foundation to explore the feasibility of market-based trading of carbon credits and since then, several other trading markets have bloomed from this core. Now, here’s where it begins to get interesting. Guess who was on the board of the Joyce Foundation when this grant was awarded? Do you need three guesses or should I just come right out and say it?

The answer? President Barack Obama.

Sandor launched the climate exchange in 2003 after getting two research grants from the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. The money went to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, for Sandor’s pilot program to trade carbon credits.

Now, lest you say that a board appointment does not a strong connection make, Chairman Sandor made a point to mention in that article that:

“Obama was on the foundation that gave us the grant,” Sandor said. “We know him well.”

http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/cap-and-trade-the-answer-to-global-warming-or-another-wall-street-payday/

Tagged with: fooling • Obama • Trade

Filed under: Affiliate Program Management

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