(Turns out this exists and is called emission trading systems, but I wrote this before realising that. Will re-write as an investigation into exists ETS’ and why they’re not being a silver bullet)
<aside> 🚧 WIP: This article is a stub
In it’s current form it’s not very compelling, but I wanted to write something down so I can start iterating and adding sources.
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Note: For this article I’m focusing on carbon emissions, despite it only being one part of the problem, for the sake of simplicity and clarity of explanation. I hope, and am optimistic that, the concepts discussed here generalise well to other aspects of the fight to protect the environment.
The main thesis here is the following: when people have to pay for consequences of their actions, the amount of bad consequences are optimised, this hasn’t been applied to carbon emissions in any consistent way; if it was, people wouldn’t be afraid of emitting carbon on moral grounds, they would only be afraid of emitting carbon on financial grounds.
Carbon credits aim to address this, but I think they’re typically done very poorly. This page is a living document which crystallises why I think current carbon credits don’t work, and what could work.
I don’t know exactly why existing carbon credits systems aren’t sufficiently tackling climate change, but I leave speculation on that below. Regardless of why it is so, carbon credits remain heavily criticised and ineffective, so there is room for a better system.
If the system described below works and is implemented, it would be a new economic slider the government has access to which directly controls how much the governed population emits.
It would also give individuals & companies a 100% effective way of offsetting their carbon by destroying carbon credits. If this doesn’t make sense now, it will later.
This would be revolutionary in the fight against climate change: no more “I would fix the problem, but I don’t know how” from politicians/companies.
I split the problem of “how to reduce carbon emissions” into: