Total Carbon Rationing

= “ accounts could be used to provide a “Universal Carbon Credit” (UCC) to every resident of a country on an equal per capita basis per recipient”.

URL = https://www.carbonrationing.org

Description

Steve Keen:

“One system that could work is a dual-price mechanism based on carbon rationing, as proposed by Total Carbon Rationing. Currently, for other reasons, many Central Banks are exploring the concept of “Central Bank Digital Currencies” (CBDCs), which would give every resident in a country an account at the Central Bank. Rather than being a means to create and store the national currency, these accounts could be used to provide a “Universal Carbon Credit” (UCC) to every resident of a country on an equal per capita basis per recipient—so that billionaires would receive the same annual UCC as paupers. To buy any commodity, a consumer would need to pay both its money price, as now, and its CO2 content as well, using UCCs.

The ration could initially be set well above the average per capita CO2 consumption of the country, so that the vast majority of the population would never exhaust their allowance, and would therefore be able to sell their excess UCCs to the rich—who, at their current consumption levels, would definitely exhaust their allowance, and thus need to buy UCCs from the poor. It would work as a redistributive mechanism, as well as a means to reduce consumption and hence GDP and CO2 output as it was reduced over time. An economically and politically stable route to reduced GDP is thus conceivable. Is it realistic? My expectation is that it is not.” (https://braveneweurope.com/steve-keen-the-macroeconomics-of-degrowth-can-planned-economic-contraction-be-stable)