The Oil Drum

This is a guest post from kiashu.

I have decided to create a new currency, the Carbon. You can spend it and earn it, but cannot exchange it between people, because it's a transaction between you and the Earth. The symbol for the carbon currency is ¢. In earlier times, currencies were physical commodities, or their value was tied to them. For example, the British Pound was called a "pound" because it was set as equivalent to a pound of silver, and around an ounce of gold. This made it easy to know what you could get for a pound, and what it was really worth. So I have set ¢1.00 as worth 1.00kg of carbon dioxide equivalent in greenhouse terms. 1kg methane, for example is worth about ¢23, since it has a greater effect on the climate than does carbon dioxide.


Climate change, our bankruptcy
The reason to express it as a currency is that with money we have a simple idea which everyone can grasp: you cannot spend more than you earn. If you get into debt and can never pay it back, you're in trouble. Likewise, if we emit more greenhouse gases than the Earth can absorb, we get into trouble; if we spend more Carbons than we earn, we get into debt. Some people find it difficult to grasp the idea of climate change because, they say, the pollutants we humans produce are so small compared to the whole system, how can they have an effect? Well, imagine that in a town of 1,000 people every single household spent just a few percent more than they earned - every year for a century. That town would be in trouble, right?

We have been spending more than we earn. When you do that with money eventually you get declared bankrupt and the court writes off your debts. That's possible with debts in dollars, but not debts in Carbons Instead of bankruptcy we get climate change. The debt just grows and makes our lives more miserable and difficult. Our spending is greater than our income.

This is a guest post by DoDo, a frontpager over at the European Tribune (and best known for his great Train Blogging series). This is an updated and adapted version of Oil prices in Euros, a story initially posted last October. In the past half-year, we often saw simultaneous crude oil and Euro/dollar rallies. The question emerges, how would oil prices look in Euros?

(Click to enlarge)

Below the fold, I'll explain what data is displayed on the diagram, and show a few more diagrams.

This is how the story has been running lately:

Figure 1 - Oil prices in United States Dollars

Following is the same story in other important currencies around the World.

NAFTA Kicked Up A Notch

The North American Free Trade Agreement is the world's most advanced example of the U.S.-led free trade model. It's not just about economics any more. The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road most nations -- or the U.S. public -- would take if they knew where it led.

The first problem is that very few people know about this next step of "deep integration." In March 2005, Presidents George Bush, Vicente Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas launched the Security and Prosperity Partnership with a splash. Although it had few visible results, the Waco meeting of the "Three Amigos" set into motion an underground process that spawned its own working groups, rules, recommendations, and agreements -- all below the radar of the legislatures and the public in the three nations. These rules and trinational programs have profound effect on the environment, the daily lives of citizens, and the future of all three countries.

The SPP not only further greases the wheels of corporate cooperation and potentially increases U.S. access to Mexican oil. Its security component represents a new and ominous form of integration, all in the name of counter-terrorism.