There must be gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in the Goldman Sachs Environmental Markets division today. No, it’s not because their favored political party is likely to lose a significant number of seats in today’s midterm election. It’s because the U.S. carbon markets they’ve worked so hard to set up are crumbling alongside the discarded chads on ballot room floors across the country.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) just announced it’s closing its doors. The voluntary carbon trading outfit was set up by junk bond magnate and cap-and-trade financier Richard Sandor and funded by the Joyce Foundation when President Obama was on the foundation’s board. You can read more about the program’s creation in my paper: The Green Money Machine.

CCX had been using the prospect of a mandatory national carbon cap-and-trade program to entice businesses to buy into its voluntary market while the prices were low. After the scheme went national, Sandor would ensure the emission permits and offset projects were grandfathered into the new national program. This would net early actors billions and had the added effect of creating corporate lobbyists who were pushing for the national program. These lobbyists formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP).

However, with energy tax advocates falling like flies across the electoral map this November, the prospects for a legislative cap-and-trade energy tax program are dwindling. CCX’s prime marketing tool has vanished and the voluntary exchange has collapsed.

The other functioning carbon market in the U.S. is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which covers the utility sector in ten Northeastern states. But RGGI auctions are open to other carbon speculators in the hopes of creating the same corporatism incentives as CCX. However, this means it’s poised to fall victim to the same failure of federal legislative grandfathering that ended CCX. RGGI’s most recent permit auction was undersubscribed and the bid price hit the floor price of $1.86 per ton, portending dark days ahead.

CCX conspicuously tried to hide its news release on election eve, which is ironically appropriate considering voters are headed to the ballot box to end the corporatism and financial speculation that spawned the cap-and-trade energy tax.

CCX is gone; RGGI is on the watch list.