Carbon Counter

Tip: It’s not all bad news on the US front. Following the lead of Seattle’s Mayor Greg Nickels, by September 2006, 295 city mayors, representing fifty million Americans, had pledged to implement the Kyoto agreement in their localities.

swipe your carbon ration card and surrender some units. You would also need enough carbon ration to cover your heating and other domestic needs.

The beauty of carbon rationing, according to its proponents, is that it would be government-enforced – making it much more likely to work than voluntary approaches. Because each person starts off the year with an equal ration, it would also be fair, just as everyone during the Second World War had an equal allocation of food and other necessities in order to jointly share in the war effort. One difference from wartime rations, however, is that carbon rations would be tradeable. This would introduce some flexibility – if you really have to have that power-boat, then you can buy an unused ration from someone who is happy to forgo such luxuries. The financial incentives would therefore reward those who kept their carbon emissions low, because they could sell their unused ration on the open market.

At the moment, things work the other way round – it is often cheaper to be energy-profligate. Budget