I am especially intrigued by those carbon rationing schemes which make the price signal two-dimensional: someone buying gasoline has to pay a certain amount of money plus has to surrender some of his or her carbon rations. In practice it is just swiping the credit card, but this one swipe debits two different accounts. The carbon ration is replenished every month, and the beauty is that everybody gets the same ration. This sends a powerful message that the atmosphere belongs to everybody. The carbon ration amounts attached to different commodities also make it easy for everyone to know the carbon footprint of their consumption choices. It puts pressure on people, but this pressure is independent of income, and it gives information which allows people to re-shape their consumption habits in a climate-friendly way.
If you run out of rations, there are ways to buy more -- as long as others stay below their rations. Here carbon rations are different from food rations in war times which one was not allowed to sell or buy. This difference is logical: one cannot eat for others, but one can reduce one's carbon consumption for others. Many of the proposals I read were not detailed enough to explain how this trading works. I assume that there are frequent auctions where consumers can buy and sell rations from each other, with the institution issuing the carbon shares serving as a big clearing house. But some people may not want to be bothered with the fact that carbon is rationed. Perhaps for them there is the option to buy rations on the spot market as they purchase the rationed goods, but for this privilege they have to pay a premium price. There is a lot to think about, but these are socialist thoughts, we want to prevent the carbon rations from becoming capital. In most proposals, this carbon rationing only covers part of consumption: purchases of gasoline, electricity, and mass transit. There is no attempt to measure the carbon embedded in goods people buy. They must be covered by other policies, for instance a carbon tax. Theoretically the cleanest way would be that the sellers of everything that contains fossil fuels have to pass through the carbon rations to their suppliers, and at the mine or wellhead or import terminal, these carbon rations have to be returned to the carbon bank. But it would be too complicated to implement this. At least at the beginning. If carbon rationing works well in the areas where it is easiest to implement, then maybe one wants to expand it later. Joseph, you are right, the issue of Climate Policy is no longer downloadable freely. Hans. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
