Monty Python's Holy GrailAs Pedro Moura Costa, founder of the carbon credit trading company EcoSecurities, explained:

If you pick a winner in the right technology in the search for a low carbon economy you are talking about potentially billions. It is really the holy grail.

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The EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme is giving investors in the carbon market a glimpse of the future, and it’s a “green goldrush.”

The flood of investments in carbon trading and green technology funds has quickly created a market worth billions, and projected to be as much as $40 billion by 2012. One businessman in New York guesses that “the next Bill Gates” will be an environmental entrepreneur, someone who taps into the emerging clean technology market and moves it into homes.

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Henrik Hasselknippe, manager of the carbon market analyst group PointCarbon, observed that the carbon market “is increasingly a capitalist arena. The eco-warriors are being replaced by the eco-capitalists.”

While this is serious business, can’t you just envision the Monty Python skit? Eco-warriors morphing into eco-capitalists with swords that turn smoke and smog into gold revealing, at last, the Holy Grail …