In today’s Sunday Star Times, Rod Oram wrote this opinion piece about what an opportunity Carbon Trading (or at least a carbon trading market) would be for New Zealand.
While his rationale is sound – the fact that we are geographically isolated, need a new business idea that we can get rolling as an early market entrant and have the legal and skill level to get it up and running. However I wonder if he is getting perhaps a little carried away and putting the cart before the horse. Just because NZ has the skills to get the market up and running does not mean it is a solid business proposition per se.
I’m not a climate change sceptic but I do feel that Carbon Trading has the worrying attributes of other sure fire solutions, and it’s astonishingly fast entry into everyday parlance does make one wonder just how thought out a solution it really is.
It seems that Carbon Trading could be easily used as an easy tool to enable businesses to find a marketing advantage and consumers appease their own guilt over their consumption but neither of these two results will actually have a position impact on the environment.
Does anyone else thinks it’s a little too fast for prudence?
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 
Hi Ben – nice blog and will be revisiting on a regular basis.
However, I’ve looked hard but can’t find the RSS feed – can ya point me to it?
I think the Time Zone One brand is stretching credibility here. Still it is an opportunity even if it is a few years behind everyone else. As a solution to climate change it falls well short. It appeals as a financially based business which involved nice brokerage fees and as Rod says plenty of work for the usual suspects.
Until global caps are applied carbon trading will just be like other derivatives systems, trading paper with little underlying value and with the potential to multiply and become every more complex.
Fancy a term deposit with a carbon kicker?