Remi
Sorry it took me so long to notice your response. Your response was to a response from George so I was not notified.
Drawdown is a great resource as it the website. There is a lot there so I might have missed it but where does it talk about what kind of regulation is the right kind of regulation. I see a lot of topics about technology and practice that will reduce carbon emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere. I don’t see where it addresses how we create incentives for those solutions.
I see some talk about pricing carbon but not much about how the price is to be paid. I don’t see any discussion about rationing carbon.
You see if we make people pay for carbon or we ration their carbon it will naturally incentivise all the other ideas on the website.
Lacking incentives we will go on doing what we have been doing.
One incentive is fear of catastrophe but that is weak because catastrophe is slow moving, regional and mostly in the unpredictable future.
Another incentive is doing the right thing and virtue signaling, this is weak as well.
Doing it for the children is sort of a combination of the first two ideas.
Cap and Trade, or carbon tax are much more powerful but because of regulatory capture by the moneyed interests I fear they are perverted into a way to funnel money into already rich pockets with little benefit to the environment. They also mostly address only fossil fuels.
One of the things that could make the biggest impact in the near term is reduction in consumption of polluting products. Burn less fuel, consume less products, eat less, heat less, drive less, air condition less when these things emit carbon. A carbon tax if high enough could lead to a reduction in emissions but its impact would hurt the poor too much.
Many schemes would return the carbon tax proceeds to the poor but then the poor could continue to pollute pretty much as before and the record of taxing the rich and giving it to the poor is sad. Again, the rich have most of the power and the poor mostly have none. The emissions reductions from taxing carbon are not all the predictable.
I have said it many times on Medium. I suggest a rationing scheme with transferable ration credits at the individual level would be a better way.
Give everyone a carbon ration that is tied to the emissions reduction goals. Put a carbon value on every product and service. To purchase a product or service you must adequate unused carbon ration credits along with the purchase price to complete the transaction. The carbon ration credits would be transferable. You can sell your unused carbon ration credits, you can give them away or you could loan them. Similarly you could buy them, receive them as a gift or borrow them. Income from the sale of these credits would be tax free. Every adult would receive the same amount of carbon rations. Maybe some adjustment for children, special needs or disability.
The impact of such a scheme would be immediate and quantifiable. It would incentivize conservation and green alternatives. Polluting parts of the economy would be adversely impacted but the green economy would get a huge boost.
TEK
