[Terrapreta] imagine this

[lou gold]

Can you imagine what this might do for a terra preta movement?
A back yard garden might be financed by the neighbor's gas-guzzler;
people in rich economies could pool their credits to finance small-scale
programs in poor rural areas; etc. The possibilities are endless.

read on....

    Go to Original<http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/02/24/brother_can_you_spare_a_carbon_credit/>

    *Brother, Can You Spare a Carbon Credit?*
    By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
    The Boston Globe

    Sunday 24 February 2008

*Thinkers weigh a radical new way to reduce greenhouse gas: Give everyone an
individual carbon allowance, and let the dealing begin.*

    Global warming is a planet-sized problem, so policy solutions tend to
aim for the grandest possible scale. The signatories of the Kyoto Protocol
have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions at a national level,
while laws in various countries and states seek to reform entire industries.


    For individuals, the picture is very different. Environmentalism often
boils down to small lifestyle choices, like turning down the thermostat and
screwing in the squiggly light bulbs - gestures that can feel virtuous but
futile. Some environmentalists even consider them counterproductive if they
substitute for activism.

    But a new wave of thinking suggests it may be better in the long run to
address this global problem in a way that directly involves individuals.
Several proposals generating buzz chiefly in the United Kingdom and Ireland
operate on the notion that every individual has an equal stake in the
atmosphere. The most provocative idea, personal carbon trading, would grant
all residents a "carbon allowance," setting a limit on carbon dioxide
emissions from their households and transportation. In the model of the
industrial "cap and trade" system, guzzlers who exceeded their allowance
would need to buy extra shares. People who conserved energy, meanwhile,
could sell their leftover shares and ride their bikes all the way to the
bank.

    This is not just a fantasy floating around in the greenest reaches of
the blogosphere. In 2006, the UK's environment secretary, David Miliband,
endorsed the idea, and the British government has commissioned a study to
explore the policy's feasibility. An alternative proposal, known as "cap and
share," is under consideration by the Irish government, and Peter Barnes, an
American entrepreneur, promotes a kindred scheme in his new book, "Climate
Solutions."

    The collective impact of individual energy use is enormous, so any
effective approach to climate change will ultimately require major changes
in individual behavior. The most broadly accepted estimate is that direct
emissions from individuals - that is, residences and transportation -
account for 30 to 40 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in both the
United States and the UK. The Union of Concerned Scientists calculates that
the average American is responsible for the emission of about 20 tons of
carbon dioxide per year.

    "Climate change is a problem that's far too complex for existing
economic models to deal with," says Matt Prescott, project director of
Carbon Limited, a program in the UK that is researching the idea of personal
carbon trading. Individuals, whose emissions "have been skyrocketing," play
a key role, says Prescott. "When you put your foot on the accelerator,
there's no blaming Ford."

    Engaging individuals directly could have a groundbreaking impact,
alerting them to their contribution to the problem while enlisting them in
solving it. There are substantial differences among these policies, and
practical and political obstacles to implementing any of them, especially in
the United States. Some believe a tax, aptly applied, could accomplish the
same goals more efficiently. But advocates see these plans as a necessary
shift in the way we think about pumping carbon into the air - infusing the
global energy debate with a deeply personal sense of rights and
responsibilities.

    Carbon dioxide is an inevitable byproduct of most modern human
activities. Beginning with the industrial revolution, we have been spewing
it into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, along with other gases
that trap heat from the sun. (Carbon dioxide makes up over 80 percent of
greenhouse gas emissions; "carbon" seems to have become shorthand for all of
them.) A solidifying consensus has it that in order to avert catastrophic
climate change, we must slash greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

    Fledgling efforts to control carbon emissions have generally taken three
forms. One is to set simple limits, such as the 2004 California law that
attempted to regulate tailpipe emissions from vehicles. (The law has been
blocked by the EPA in a decision now under appeal.) Another approach is
making them expensive by taxing some or all fossil fuel sales. A few
countries, such as Britain and Finland, have passed carbon tax laws, as have
Boulder, Colo., and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and British Columbia.

    The third category consists of cap-and-trade systems, a sort of cross
between the first two that uses market mechanisms to discourage emissions. A
limit is imposed, but players can exceed it for a price, and the
energy-efficient can benefit by selling their surplus. The Kyoto Protocol
involves such a mechanism, and the European Union has its own emissions
trading scheme that allows businesses in member countries to trade emissions
rights. And the trend has begun to catch on in the US Congress, where
several current bills would implement an industrial cap-and-trade system.

    In 1996, British policy analyst David Fleming, director of the research
center the Lean Economy Connection, thought of a twist on this approach:
What if, in addition to nations and corporations, we applied these rules to
people? Under his plan, an independent committee would set a cap for total
emissions for all of Britain. Forty percent of this cap would be allocated
to individuals, free, with everyone receiving the same share. The rest would
be allotted to businesses and government, which would have to pay for their
shares. To rein in emissions, the total cap would be incrementally lowered
each year.

    Fleming and others imagine a system that reaches deeply into how people
live - and how they think about their lifestyles.

    Under such a system, you would have a personal carbon account that used
the technology of credit and debit cards. When you bought gas or paid
utility bills, the units would be deducted.

    When you had to run errands, before hopping in the car, you would pause
to consider taking the bus, or riding your bike, or calling up a friend to
car pool. Vacationers deciding between Vermont and Colorado would have to
weigh the relative carbon impact of driving and flying. To save up carbon
units for the trip, they might have to turn down the air conditioner for a
couple of weeks. Carbon costs would start to figure into such everyday
decisions, until the calculus became automatic.

    If you had carbon savings, you could use them next year, when the cap
would be lower, or sell them on the carbon market.

    One of the main attractions of this idea is its equity. The outsized
carbon footprints of the wealthy - those who fly by private jet and live in
McMansions - would come with an extra price tag, so the penalty would fall
on the people most able to afford it. The poor, who generate much lower
emissions, could actually turn a profit by selling their surplus.

    As entrepreneurs and businesses adapted to this system, the development
of alternative energy and energy-efficient appliances would take off. As you
used more wind power and your car consumed less gasoline, you'd have a
little more leeway with your carbon account. At the same time, though, every
year the cap would tighten, cutting into your allowance, further spurring
conservation and innovation.

    "Getting Americans to find another way of living is going to be very
difficult," says Fleming. His plan, he believes, would be a "guarantee to
change their way of life and have a future."

    Depending on your perspective, the notion of a personal carbon allowance
may sound utopian or nightmarish. Meanwhile, there are other proposed
schemes that may be easier for Americans to swallow. They share certain
elements with that idea, but avoid the individual quota and place more
emphasis on rights than responsibility.

    In Ireland - a country that recently made headlines with its dramatic
success in reducing plastic bag use - the government is considering a
proposal called "cap and share." In the first stage, it would apply only to
vehicle fuels, but the scope would eventually expand.

    Under the plan, which could be adopted as soon as next December, an
independent trust would set a cap for consumption of gasoline and diesel
fuel, convert that figure into tons of carbon dioxide, and divide that
number by the adult population of the country. Each adult would get a permit
in the mail representing one share. Each company that imports vehicle fuel
into Ireland would need to get its hands on those permits in order to sell
its product.

    "When you got your permit, you would have to decide what to do," says
Richard Douthwaite, an Irish economist and founder of the Foundation for the
Economics of Sustainability. "If you tore up the permit, you would be
preventing that amount of vehicle fuel from being released." But the more
tempting, and no doubt more popular, option would be to sell the permit to a
company, via the local bank or another broker.

    By adding a cost to selling gas in Ireland, and by placing a limit on
the total, the scheme would immediately cause fuel prices to rise, providing
an incentive for people to drive less or to devise greener means of powering
vehicles. But consumers would also be partly compensated for the higher cost
of fuel through the sale of their permits.

    A third proposal, which has support from some American
environmentalists, is an idea called the "sky trust," first floated in 1999
by Peter Barnes, the American entrepreneur and a fellow at the Tomales Bay
Institute in California. In several books, including "Climate Solutions,"
Barnes conceives of the atmosphere as a common asset. He proposes that an
independent board set a cap for total emissions and hold an auction for
emissions rights. Companies would pay for the permits, and the resulting pot
of cash would be divided equally among citizens.

    His scheme is based on an existing American system, the Alaska Permanent
Fund, founded in 1976 in response to a windfall from oil exports. Every
year, a semi-independent corporation distributes the oil revenue among
Alaskan residents.

    Barnes calls this a "very interesting precedent - this notion that if
you have revenue from selling a common resource, of giving it back to
everybody equally."

    Although different in structure from personal carbon trading, the sky
trust would similarly reward the carbon-thrifty. "If you have a Hummer and
three houses, you're going to be paying in a lot more than you get back,"
says Barnes. "If you ride a bicycle and take the bus, you'll get back more
than you pay in."

    According to Richard Starkey, who studies all three schemes at the
Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in the UK, the main advantage of
personal carbon trading over the second two ideas is that it might most
effectively foster "carbon literacy," as consumers would be made aware of
the exact cost in carbon for their decisions. It would also send a signal
about acceptable levels of personal emissions. The minuses, however, would
be the need for the card infrastructure, and, as Starkey puts it, the "Big
Brother element."

    David Fleming regards the second two schemes as "nonstarters" because
they guarantee money rather than energy. As a result, they are unequipped to
grapple with a second major concern of energy analysts, "peak oil" - the
coming energy scarcity caused by an expected drop in oil production.
Fleming's plan would promise everyone a minimum share of energy.

    Partisans of all these schemes assert their superiority over a carbon
tax on gasoline and other fuels. They call such taxes regressive, since as a
rule flat taxes penalize the poor. But Dan Rosenblum, a lawyer and cofounder
of the Carbon Tax Center, doesn't see the ideas as fundamentally different
from a tax. "They avoid the word 'tax,' and there is a benefit to that," he
says. "But we're all saying that you ought to pay for dumping carbon into
the atmosphere." Some carbon tax plans address the "regressive" charge with
provisions for returning revenue through reduced income taxes or rebates.

    In the UK, skeptics of personal carbon trading call it an administrative
nightmare and an infringement on civil liberties. In the United States, with
a much larger population, much greater aversion to government interference,
and less widespread appreciation of the threat of climate change, such a
scheme may seem unthinkable. That could change if it's successfully
implemented in the UK, and if the perceived threat of global warming
intensifies. In the UK, Prescott says that in their surveys of the public,
"the idea of an allowance is very popular. There seems to be a pretty high
level of recognition that something has to happen."

    Because of the relative administrative simplicity and the Alaska
precedent, Barnes believes the sky trust scheme, at least, should be
politically palatable in the United States, and there are indications that
we could be headed in that general direction. This year's remaining
Democratic presidential candidates support a cap-and-trade system that would
auction permits to companies, thereby generating revenue for the federal
government. "The question is," says Barnes, "to whom does that money
belong?"
------------------------------
    *Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is an associate editor at Boston Review Books.*

-- 
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