As Obama’s Climate Change Bill is debated, news comes from Europe about a great new way for consumers to participate in carbon emissions cap and trade schemes.
Usually consumers believe the only way cap and trade will affect them is through price differences based upon the amount of carbon emissions used in a product’s manufacture and delivery.
However Sandbag UK have come up with a brilliantly simple way of engaging consumers directly in the carbon market.
In short, they buy emissions permits as they become available and then refuse to sell them on to other polluting companies.
This throttles the permit supply and forces polluters, who would otherwise buy the permits, to adopt less destructive methods of manufacturing and distributing their products.
Each of the sequestered permits is a virtual sandbag against the rising tide of climate change, hence the organisation’s name.
Their message is that we can use these virtual sandbags to stop climate change becoming something far worse.
Sandbag currently prices one tonne of carbon emissions at around $40, making this an affordable way for an individual to make a real contribution to slowing down climate change and eliminating pollution.
You there, stop polluting!
Not satisfied with such a pioneering approach to cap and trade, Sandbag have also launched a fantabulous interactive map.
Littered with red and green dots, it tells you exactly who needs more carbon emissions permits and who has permits to sell.
This is wonderful stuff: a shining example of how consumers can participate directly in a carbon market and how permits data should be made transparently available.
About Chris Milton
$40 a tonne is pretty pricey given the current price of a tonne of carbon is 13.70 Euros on the EU ETS.
Just wonderful. Now everyone can help accelerate a total global economic collapse! Such idiocy has never been witnessed on the planet before. It would make far more sense for govts to invest in developing new clean processes or to provide incentives. Instead we’re witnessing punitive measures that will result in higher prices for everything, create scarcity, increase poverty, and perhaps yield a global food crisis. Think about it, farmers make the food we eat. Punish them with higher fuel, fertilizer, pesticide, and direct punishment for the menthane their animals produce and they quit. They quit or cut back and people starve. Idiots all of you.
Hi Keiron — this is a very good point.
Since the ETS was launched there has been a glut of permits issued, far too many to make the scheme true effectual. The UK Government is on record as saying £25 (ie. $40) is an appropriate level for carbon to be traded at and Sandbag UK has simply followed it’s lead. The 13euro price equates to
Please also remember that Sandbag UK is a growing not-for-profit with it’s own running costs. This includes a recent report critical of the way the ETS is being run.
I admit the premium appears hefty in percentage terms. However to suck up all the excess permits needs 20% of the EU’s population to buy one permit each. $40 isn’t too steep a price when it’s put like that!