I Made a New Word XII
MKFreeberg at House of Eratosthenes on Jan 26 2008 at 8:10 am | Filed under: Conservation, Feature Article
Bot Market
A market that exists in transaction movement only, producing no wealth.
In a stricter definition, a wealth-neutral market created from government regulation, in which the market then takes an active role in creating and refining.
Named after the most horrifying of the beasties on Cracked’s list of the five most horrifying bugs in the world, the Bot Fly, which feeds itself by tunneling through animal flesh. It fits very well…
There are dozens of varieties of Bot Fly, they’re each highly adapted to target a specific animal, they have delightfully descriptive names like Horse Stomach Bot Fly, Sheep Nose Bot Fly and, hey, guess what. One of them is called Human Bot Fly.
And this is inspired, in turn, by a story (about which we learn courtesy of Rick) putting us on notice of a brand new legal specialty: Environmentalism. Try on $700 an hour for size.
Lawyers are becoming some of the best-paid environmentalists. Twenty of the 100 highest-grossing U.S. law firms have started practices advising Companies on climate change, according to a Bloomberg survey of the firms’ Web sites. The attorneys help clients finance clean-energy projects and lobby Congress, typically billing $500 to $700 an hour.
Firms including Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Heller Ehrman and Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton joined the global warming cause as real-estate and structured-finance attorneys lost jobs to the worst U.S. housing slump in 27 years. The move into climate-change law is gaining traction as Congress considers a mandatory carbon market to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Yeah, George Bush gets blame for the rapidly weakening U.S. dollar. He deserves a great deal of this. You spend money like it’s going out of style…you confront the enemy, at enormous financial cost, as we have been needing to do for a long time, but to buttress your “political capital” you refuse to veto any NEW spending…lemme repeat that, any NEW spending…yes, the dollar will tank.
Yes, a lot of it is Bush’s fault.
But how strong will a market ever become, when it feeds on itself? These lawyers are making money by killing business. No, wait, it’s worse than that — lawyers have been doing that for generations.
These lawyers, though, make the money by talking the businesses into committing suicide.
The world carbon-trading market tripled to about $30 billion between 2005 and 2006, according to the World Bank. Such a market in the U.S. may reach as much as $300 billion by 2020, Peter Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said in U.S. House testimony last year.
The model proposed by Warner, a Virginia Republican, and Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, is similar to the European Union’s emissions program. Heavy polluters must buy credits to comply, while cleaner Companies can profit by selling them.
How many millions of people do we have in the United States who are “into environmentalism”?
How many of them are purely useful-idiots — making no money from it? People who see it as nothing more than a fashion statement?
How many of them drive big, big cars so they can sit way up high? Even when commuting to work? By themselves? With a lunch box, a badge with which to get in the front door, and nothing else? No kids, no soccer gear, no camping equipment…just a sandwich, an apple and their own ass at eleven miles per gallon?
How many of them bitch about the gas prices?
How does an oil company pay for carbon credits? Built into the system, right? The system…which is funded by a gas company…which makes money from gas…which is sold to the useful-idiot environmentalist guy in his big ol’ Navigator driving his own ass and nothing else to work.
Waiting for the day George W. Bush leaves office. Just like the lawyer making $700 an hour producing nothing. Except the useful-idiot environmentalist, is looking forward to Bush’s exit because he’s counting on gas prices going down…
We are being SO had.
Update: Went back and checked my notes to figure out how I learned about the dreaded Bot Fly. It was linked in an unusually verbose and action-packed post from Duffy…which has lots and lots of other good stuff.
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