Personal Carbon Trades Info

Personal carbon trading refers essentially to the idea of giving an equal allocation of emissions credits to individuals on a per capita basis, within national carbon budgets. Individuals would then have to surrender these credits when buying fuel or electricity. Individuals wanting or needing more energy would be able to partake in emissions trading to secure more credits, just as companies do now within the EU ETS. It is sometimes confused with carbon offsetting due to the shared notion of paying for emissions, but is a quite different concept designed to be mandatory and to guarantee that nations achieve their carbon emissions targets.

Proponents of personal carbon trading claim that it helps increase ‘carbon literacy’, thereby allowing individuals to make a fair contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It also allows the burden of reducing emissions to be shared evenly throughout the economy, rather than focusing all the attention on business and governments, and should encourage more localised economies.

Personal carbon trading has been criticized for possible complexity and high transaction costs. As yet, there is minimal reliable data on these issues. There is also the criticism that personal carbon trading will be publicly unacceptable. Some have criticised the system saying that it would allow the rich to buy extra carbon rations and so go on polluting while the poor have to cut back, but this has generally overlooked the fact that the rich could only buy additional rations from the poor, thus achieving wealth redistribution, while in no way reducing the effectiveness of the scheme in reducing carbon emissions.
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If this option works to reduce pollution, then so be it. But this seems to be no more than the rich and wasteful of the world being given the right to pollute way beyond their means while giving token amounts of cash to the poor. Should the poor be made to accept money from people who maybe just killing them with pollution. A bit on the cynical side yes but imagine this scenario, the rich pay the poor money to have the right pollute more. Eventually the poor can afford to buy more energy and begin polluting more. Besides that, who do the poor buy credits from, themselves. Or are they not allowed to buy credits like the rich. And if the government wants to start up this scheme, then I'll go live in a tent for a few years just to get rich so then I can buy a mansion with ten bedrooms and 5 baths, a pool, and tennis court, and maybe even 4 or five green cars too.