A Carbon Trust

barnes.pngPeter Barnes, founder of one of the first social businesses - Working Assets - is full of good ideas. And people are starting to notice. His most recent book Capitalism 3.0 builds on his previous book Who Owns The Sky, which lays out a public trust model for public goods - like the sky and the carbon (and other pollutants) that enter it. His model works much like oil in Alaska: the oil belongs to the citizens of Alaska and thus every year they get a check for it. Well, the sky belongs to you and I, so those who want to spew carbon into it, should do so responsibly and pay for it. And that money comes directly to us as opposed to going to the black hole of Uncle Sam. NASA scientist, James Hansen, has recently come out in favor of exploring a public trust model as a potential solution for our carbon crisis. See today's NYT for more.

Tags

More like this

Ideas like this are useful both in themselves and insofar as they are a foil to arguments that carbon pricing is 'just another tax.' More meaningfully, it might be called a financial penalty for harming future generations.

That NYT article certainly spells it out in some detail...and it needs it as it is pretty complex. Additionally there were at the time of my reading about 150 letters in the comment section. It seems that the entire issue is so contentious that it will take a long long time to gain any ground on this, not the least of which is the growing realization that even if there is some connection between human produced CO2 and global warming, the reason the sense of urgency and alarm is quite likely a bit overdone. I personally like Al Gore's charisma and liked his movie, but I know that he has a history of being in error with his judgement, such as when he selected Lieberman as his running mate and when he created a complex scheme to reduce government paperwork. In the mean time as we squabble of AGW we see habitat disappear and restoration efforts overshadowed and efforts that recognize the shifting of ecosystem aside from what will happen as the planet warms (surely nobody here believes there is some ideal state in which the earth resides which just happens to be more or less where we are now)...gosh, I wish Gore's efforts had focused on natural environmental degradation and pollution in general rather than getting ensnarled over the complexities of climate change and CO2. Some would call me a "denier" but "heretic" is probably a more accurate description which is what the orthodoxy calls those who believe but not in the approved form.
Thanks for bringin this our our attention.

I wish Gore's efforts had focused on natural environmental degradation and pollution in general rather than getting ensnarled over the complexities of climate change and CO2. Some would call me a "denier" but "heretic" is probably a more accurate description which is what the orthodoxy calls those who believe but not in the approved form. Thanks for bringin this our our attention.

f urgency and alarm is quite likely a bit overdone. I personally like Al Gore's charisma and liked his movie, but I know that he has a history of being in error with his judgement, such as when he selected Lieberman as his running mate and when he created a complex scheme to reduce gover