Managing one’s personal carbon budget can be a step towards a new economic narrative, based on economics that takes account of global commons like the climate. We have a great climate policy co-authored with economist Prof Steve Keen that focuses on a realistic mechanism – carbon accounts – to do this nationally. Only when governments, businesses, and we as individuals reduce our CO2 emissions together can we prevent the devastating impacts of climate change.
Why is action needed?
We can already see the damaging impact of climate change in the news headlines everyday.
How bad climate change will become, and how society reacts, is all in the future, but has been modelled on some of the most advanced computers available to science. There is no one definite outcome. A thriving new renewables-based economy or doom and destruction – read more…
All the evidence indicates that God is an inveterate gambler and that he throws the dice on every possible occasion.
Stephen Hawking
What is the fundamental problem?
Climate change is a cumulative problem: the total carbon dioxide emitted over time matters, not just the emissions in any given year.
Climatologists have calculated that globally we can emit no more than 420 gigatonnes of CO2 (Gt CO2e) from now on – effectively a ‘global carbon budget’ – beyond which the impact of emissions will be catastrophic. We are currently on target to hit this level in 2028[1]To avoid climate change getting out of control, in 2015 the Paris Climate Agreement set a target to hold the global average temperature rise to well below 2°C (or 3.6°F) above pre-industrial … Continue reading, which is now effectively inevitable. This proposal from EcoCore is what we can do next.
Whether we pass this level, hold it by cutting out fossil fuels, or come back to it in the future by building massive CO2 capture machines, what is important now is simply to reduce the burning of fossil fuels.
How can we radically cut down the burning of fossil fuels?
The 2015 United Nations Paris Climate Agreement was good, because it is something the whole world must do, but the desired results didn’t happen. The inability of citizens, businesses and government to willingly reduce emissions of CO2 means a mandatory reduction mechanism is needed.
What difference can a single person make?
Obviously governments should be stepping up and leading. The main take-home from the last global climate conference was this: our action on the ground is what will prompt leaders to act.
Starting at the smallest scale, we all have our own personal carbon footprint and we need to start reducing it. EcoCore works with our sister organisation EcoCounts to facilitate a local group approach which aims to normalise sustainable and low emissions lifestyles within our group. The EcoCounts group is not just doing this for itself. Action as a group demonstrates what is possible to decision-makers. What the EcoCounts group does directly helps us to promote the idea of carbon accounts, to reinforce the idea that people will accept such levels of intervention when it counters the immense risks of climate change.
Our proposal for a national carbon currency based on carbon accounts
We propose to set a national carbon budget served by a carbon currency and from it, allocate every citizen an allowance of carbon tokens, into their carbon account, to become their personal carbon budget. Whenever a person buys goods or services, in addition to the financial cost, the person must simultaneously pay a carbon token price that reflects the amount of CO2 generated to produce those goods or services. This is not paid in money, but in carbon tokens, and all businesses must also run their own carbon accounts to manage their own carbon expenditure and income.
Such a system would revolutionise our approach to reducing CO2 emissions. It would give us:
- equal responsibility in reducing our emissions
- freedom to spend our carbon allowance on what is important to us
- a strong carbon price signal throughout business and industry
This can provide the motivation for business and industry to produce the products and services with the lowest carbon price to attract customers, and it will drive manufacturers and other industries to seek out or develop low-carbon technologies to reduce their own carbon costs.
References
| ↑1 | To avoid climate change getting out of control, in 2015 the Paris Climate Agreement set a target to hold the global average temperature rise to well below 2°C (or 3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels, and ideally 1.5°C (2.7°F). |
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