I learned about carbon rationing through Hans Ehrbar's helpful references to it in the thread "[Pen-l] EU conference in Durban Framework: Informative Video Stream", and I have started to check some of them, and found them quite useful in understanding what carbon rationing refers to. I am still looking into this, but my first impressions are as follows:
a) It is complicated. Some of the rationing plans are complex, and it also seems that every group who advocates carbon rationing has a different version of it. The differences include what is covered under the rationing; whether the ration cards can be traded; whether there are special provisions for groups that would be badly hurt by the rationing; what is to be done to control carbon embodied in goods that covered by rationing; how much consideration is given to the inevitable unpopularity of such a scheme; and so forth. b) It is widely called "personal carbon trading", as it is by some of the references Hans Ehrbar gives. For example, the magazine "Climate Policy" calls it by that term. (Unfortunately so far I have been unable to find where their website allows free downloading of the relevant articles. I'm probably missing something obvious...) Thus it is recognized to be a variant of carbon trading schemes, not a separate type of plan. And one can expect that once such trading in the carbon rations begins, various of the features we see in cap and trade are likely, including one or another form of carbon offsets. c) Indeed, the difference between cap and trade and carbon rationing is that carbon rationing is envisioned as, essentially, cap and trade applied to consumers, rather than to industry, agriculture, etc. It seems to be referred to as "downstream" carbon trading as opposed to "upstream" carbon trading. d) However, some carbon ration schemes envision that the carbon rations won't be tradeable. But that's easily said then done. In this regard, one of the references Hans Ehrbar referred to went into the history of black markets in supposedly non-tradeable ration schemes ( see "Rationing returns: a solution to global warming?"). e) Indeed, in practice, it is impossible to make carbon rations untradeable without making every commodity untradeable (shades of the supposed "carbon dictatorship" feared by the Australian environmental activist Timothy Flannery). That's because just about every commodity involves some energy input. And if one could trade objects, then one could get around a ban on trading carbon rations without even resorting to the black market in rations, by trading the objects which carbon is embodied in, rather than the ration cards. f) Such trading of carbon rations is harder in some schemes, in which the carbon rations only apply to one's heating bills, gas for cars, airplane trips, etc., rather than everything, but on the other hand, such schemes often envision that other commodities will be covered by some form of "upstream" cap and trade. g) Carbon rationing puts pressure on the consumers, mainly on the working masses; it is not a rationing scheme for the capitalist producers. It's based on the idea that the masses will then put pressure on the corporations, as if the workers were the masters in capitalist society, and BP and other large corporations their servants. T h) I've lost the exact reference, but I saw some sources on carbon rationing refer to the problem of people who need bigger carbon rations - I presume this includes, say, workers who have long drives to work in old cars. So either there needs to be some special mechanism to deal with this; or necessity will drive carbon trading whether legal or not; or a section of the working population would be in real trouble under carbon rationing. So either the carbon rationing scheme devastates a certain section of the population, or it becomes even more complicated, with special provisions for different categories of people. i) Some sources are quite concerned over how the mass of working people would react to carbon rationing. But these are just some preliminary remarks on carbon rationing. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
