Following up on Chris Horner’s post this morning, the carbon offset companies — after the shutdown of voluntary emissions trading on the Chicago Climate Exchange — are keeling over with no hope of an advertising blitz being able to save them:

An Iowa-based company that helps farmers buy and sell agricultural carbon credits is making plans to shut down, following the closure of the Chicago Climate Exchange. Dave Miller is Chief Science Officer for Agragate Climate Credits Corporation, based at the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

Miller says the company is winding down operations as the market for voluntary carbon credits never took off as expected with congress failing to take steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “Congress did not pass that legislation, and the current political climate does not provide any optimism or foresight if you would, that a program that would be regulating carbon in a cap and trade scenario is any time in the near future,” Miller says.

Farmers earn the credits by adopting conservation practices. Miller says the company can’t wait any longer for the situation to change. “For many of us in the program it’s been nothing but expenses for the last year and a half, two years. There’s been very little revenue generated out of carbon credits in the last 18 months,” Miller says.

Is there any doubt that if these attempts to sell worthless paper were not government-backed schemes, that state attorney generals would be investigating them as scams?