The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

Why Now? Obama Wants to Bring Back Cap-and-Trade

this is more to the point than the Forbes article. I suspect industry CEO's greeted obama's announcement with huge yawns and uncomplimentary epithets.

there is no imminent driver to encourage extensive exploration in the areas obama opened up yesterday. Exploration companies will send an occassional crew and vessel explore in frontier areas because they can and demand is not forcing resources to be used in low risk areas. It's a no win game for the government and by the time they wake up and smell the obvious the current crop of clowns will be out of office and oil companies will be able to leverage deals like they did for the deepwater GOM ~15 yrs ago.

btw GE has a lot more to gain from cap and trade than $ from carbon offsets. they're counting on huge new infrastructure builds that will result from new emissions regulations tied to c&t.