EcoCore is working on interlinked themes academically, technologically and politically to help build the future we all want beyond climate change.
Pioneering the development of carbon allowances as a fair and effective system for everyone to reduce their impact
We know that 40% of carbon emissions come from households[1]See this report from the UK Climate Change Committee: https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/5CB-Infographic-FINAL-.pdf, but some people create far more CO2 emissions than others. We are campaigning for Britain to introduce a per capita ‘carbon allowance’, that gives everyone the same quota for their CO2 emissions, and is a fair and effective way to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions.
To ensure that people stay within their budget and to bring business and commerce into the framework, we are pioneering the idea of a carbon currency based on carbon allowance tokens. In this system, each person is allocated the same number of carbon tokens, and whenever they buy goods or services, in addition to the cash price, the vendor charges them a carbon price, which they pay from their carbon allowance. The same applies to business, industry and government to bring full coverage of the economy. Read more about our agenda.
We are working with academics in the UK and Australia to explore how this system could be implemented and to examine economic projections from systems modelling. Read more about our research activities.
We created the North London carbon footprinting group EcoCounts and work with this community to develop effective ways of reducing the actual CO2 emissions that we are responsible for, using data collection, personal carbon accounts and a team-based approach.
Developing technology to enable us all to make more eco-friendly decisions in our day-to-day lives
We want to make it easy for people to reduce their carbon footprint. That’s why we are working to develop easy, free technology, that will enable people to make choices – from how they travel to their supermarket shop – that work for them and our planet.
We are working with software companies and communities to find ways to build smart, usable tech that ordinary people will want to use everyday to keep up with the vast changing world of climate action.
Read more here.
Ensuring government is taking effective action to reduce CO2 emissions
Pledges made by every government in the world are not enough to limit our CO2 emissions and prevent further climate change. We are campaigning for Britain to lead at the United Nations in translating the commitments our government has made[2]From the UN: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop26 into binding agreements with our trading partners. We advocate the UNFCCC-compliant Contraction and Convergence framework of the Global Commons Institute and lobby at national and international levels for its adoption under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The carbon currency mechanism we advocate can provide a common, shared, transparent approach in each nation as the basis for negotiation. This approach has significant advantages over carbon pricing efforts or carbon finance agreements. Our ambition is to bring a focus on to this carbon quantity-based policy and shift the often tortuous high level discussions away from the current ineffective and dangerous quagmire. Read more…
References
| ↑1 | See this report from the UK Climate Change Committee: https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/5CB-Infographic-FINAL-.pdf |
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| ↑2 | From the UN: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop26 |