Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

On December 19, 2017 the L A Times published a front page article hyping that “China launches the world’s biggest carbon trading market” with great praise for China providing climate leadership. The Times article offered the following highly politicalized climate alarmist characterization of this stupendous event.

“Experts say that China is assuming the climate leadership role from the U.S., which has been retreating on its climate advocacy since President Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump, who has repeatedly cast doubt on the existence of human-induced climate change, announced in June that the U.S. would quit the Paris climate accord; on Monday, in a wide-ranging national security speech, he dropped climate change from a list of global threats.

California is among several states that have shunned Washington’s position on the issue; in June, Gov. Jerry Brown traveled to China and signed a nonbinding agreement with Beijing to limit greenhouse gases.”

The Times article quoted the Environmental Defense Fund which noted that:

“Keohane said the plan could enable China — the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter — to formulate even more ambitious climate goals in coming years.”

The only word of caution provided in this otherwise bubbly Times article about China’s great world climate leadership as demonstrated by the new carbon market was:

“Experts say the carbon market’s success is not assured — China is beleaguered by limited monitoring and verification capabilities, a lack of transparency, and a politically influenced legal system.”

Wow! That’s quite a big qualifier.

Completely missing from the L A Times article was the rather critical point that the market isn’t actually starting and no ones when it will start as noted in another article discussing China’s new market which revealed this significant point which the Times carefully concealed from its piece.

“Trading won’t start on Dec. 19, because the government is only now announcing detailed plans of how the market will operate. It’s not clear when exactly trading will start, but the Guangzhou China Emission Exchange director expects the price to rise gradually to about 300 yuan ($45) per ton.”

This more candid article also offered the following guess about what the price per ton of carbon might be whenever or if ever the market opens.

“A director at the China Emission Exchange in Guangzhou, who runs the Guangdong province’s carbon market and who asked not to be named, predicts the initial price will be about 50 yuan ($7.50) per ton of emissions.”

Additionally the article noted that these carbon prices are far below the so called social costs of carbon pushed by climate alarmists.

“Economists estimate that every ton of carbon dioxide emitted today will likely cause $125 worth of damage to society in the future. This number is known as the social cost of carbon.”

In this most recent misleading climate alarmist article the L A Times is clearly showing its alarmism frustration as demonstrated by the fact that the Times hid critical information from the public.

This frustration is driven by the fact that the world is rapidly moving away from scientifically unsupported phony and purely politicalized climate alarmism polices.

Because of this reality the Times must push carefully contrived climate hype in its articles by making sure to conceal the reality of a dying climate alarmist cause emerging around the world.