As a follow up to my angry rant about our monetary system, I feel obligated to serve up a little portion of hope. After all, this blog is supposed to be about solutions. So I'm sharing a very good interview today -- Richard Douthwaite talked with Jason Bradford on the Reality Report a while back about the possibility of a carbon-backed global currency to tackle climate change. Here’s the link to listen to the interview:
http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_douthwaite_on_the_reality_report
Basically, it’s a glorified cap and trade system resulting in a currency that represents an allowance to emit carbon. To launch the currency, every nation in the world is issued a pre-determined number of credits based on their population. Once the currency is issued, countries can trade their carbon credits freely—the idea being that energy hungry countries would buy credits from poor countries, thus distributing wealth more evenly around the world.
If this was implemented in combination with an Oil Depletion Protocol to prevent wild fluctuations in the price of oil and food, perhaps Africans could keep eating past 2020.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
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2 comments:
Ryan,
Although your Friday blog may have been dead on, I more appreciate the link on your Saturday blog. Richard Douthwaite has a way of explaining the economy in very simple terms so that anyone can understand it. Thanks for sharing Douthwaite's info.
Jim
Hey Jim,
Yeah, Douthwaite is good. He knows that until we change the way money works we can change nothing. The idea of channelling the power of the market to set us on a less self-destructive course is powerful indeed.
We need a smarter economy, with a clear focus on creating incentives that preserve the world's ecosystems. The incentives in our current economy are destroying our only life-support system: Mother Nature.
Our survival depends on setting new goals for civilization, so we need a global currency that encourages capital to flow into the projects that can make that happen.
Peace, Ryan
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