Backed by a massive global movement, the Trust will seek to persuade nation-state governments to enforce the scheme within their own jurisdictions by requiring all imports into, or production of fossil fuels within, their countries to be covered by a permit issued by the Trust, refusing entry into their economies of coal, oil or gas not covered by a licence issued by the Trust.
Whilst recognising that persuading governments to play their part is crucial and likely to be the hardest part of this project to achieve, no country willing to do so should have any difficulty in putting in place the necessary regulations. At present many countries impose taxes on the use of fossil fuel-based resources such as petrol and require permits for activities ranging from fishing to unconventional gas extraction. What we propose is therefore not radically new.
What Nation-states can agree on:
What nation-states don’t agree on:
|That we need to prevent irreversible climate change||Who is ultimately responsible for ensuring a safe climate|
|That we need to stay below 2 degrees of warming||How to account for “historic emissions” by developed countries and who has the “right to emit more”|
|That we cannot burn all known fossil fuel reserves while staying below the 2 degree limit||How to allocate the global carbon budget|
CapGlobalCarbon allows Nation-states to agree and act on the viewpoints they share while leaving the divisive issues such as the allocation of emission rights to be dealt with by the free-market.
We envisage the relationship of CapGlobalCarbon and nation-state governments as one of partnership. Here are some relevant considerations:
- Inviting a nation-state government to cooperate will not be to question its authority; on the contrary, it will be inviting it to exercise its authority.
- What the Trust has to offer should appeal to governments. A global Cap and Dividend scheme is designed to deliver the most cost-effective realization of climate targets. Countries would not be set against each other since, rather than each country having to impose its own individual cap, they would all be subject to the same global cap, The same would apply to enterprises. The global economy as whole would have a cap, a cap based on climate science.
- Inviting a nation-state government to cooperate will complement and not be inconsistent with all that government is already doing about climate change.
- Only a global cap and licence scheme can be certain of achieving the reductions necessary to enable the world to achieve the radical reductions in global emissions required to avert climate change causing massive damage much of the cost of which would fall on governments: that is what, with the cooperation of nation-state governments, CapGlobalCarbon can provide.
- The Trust would be able to independently verify whether countries were complying with the emissions cuts. This is much easier to achieve with an upstream cap.