Mark: looks like your supporters have killed the debate.lol

In my view, requiring the Energy and Fuel companies to buy Carbon Quotas through auction will add to inflationary pressure in the Economy, will not promote de-Carbonisation, and cannot guarantee global Carbon Emissions reductions.

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The best way to think about Transition from Carbon Energy to Zero Carbon Energy, or de-Carbonisation is to consider the Buy One Get One Free sales ploy.

What needs to happen is that incentives are created to precipitate de-Carbonisation, given a shrinking annual Carbon Budget, a regime of progressively less Carbon Permits available.

If an Energy Company wants to make money in this climate, they will need to either put their prices up or de-Carbonise so they can offer more product.

The higher the ratio of Clean to Dirty Energy in their products, the more they can sell. But if it costs more to make their Energy cleaner than it does to put their prices up to pay for the extra Dirty Energy they want to sell, what will they do ? It's obvious really.

The only sure way to make de-Carbonisation the logical route is to explicitly limit the amount of Carbon that the Energy Companies can sell. In other words, do not make money a proxy for Carbon. Cut the Carbon itself, don't just put a price on it and assume that will be sufficient to enforce de-Carbonisation !

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It's the size of the costs involved, the proportion of the Economy, that makes Carbon Pricing on all quotas unworkable.

The fact is that costs spiral upwards with Carbon, causing general inflation, as everything is dependent on Carbon.

The United Nations says that we not got a high enough target for Carbon Cuts. This is not a minor manipulation of a business sector this is major upheaval of everything - and immediately.

Do we need to say to companies that some of their business is outlawed ?

Auctions won't help really - there's only a small number of players who will get the Carbon Permits because they have the wealth base - it will protect Carbon-based business, not remove it !

A gentler approach will be to remove a part of the consumer base - in other words - Ration Carbon.

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Mark Lynas has fallen into the trap of making money a proxy value for Carbon. But money cannot control Carbon directly, as more money can always be created.

Cost is always relative. Carbon Emissions should be absolute.

You need a regulatory device to force Transition.

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http://www.changecollege.org.uk/html/why_mark_lynas_is_still_wrong.html

Oh dear. I think a lot of these comments are based on unclarity about the issues. I agree with Mark Lynas 80%. The facts are these: virtually all the fossil fuels and carbon enters the UK economy through 12 oil refineries, about 4 natural gas import terminals, 40 coal mines and 12 dedicated coal ports. DBERR collects statistics at all these places of the oil, gas and coal entering the economy and its dead easy to calculate from this how much CO2 these fuels, when burned will eventually put into the atmosphere.

So, at these locations run by "first suppliers" it should not be allowed to sell fuels without a permit because they are goods toxic to the global climate. Permits should be denominated in the greenhouse gas content of the fuel when burned and subject to a reducing cap.

If there is a reducing cap on permits then the actual amount of fuel and carbon flowing into the economy would be reduced. People and companies would be obliged to accomodate and adapt to a fait accomplis that had already occurred, in the jargon, upstream. At this point everyone would be struggling to survive with less fuel and would be obliged to cope in all the ways green activists typically argue for - cycling and walking, turning their radiators down, insulating their houses etc. There would be plenty of work helping people cope.

But it needs to be made fair. Prices would rise and the poor will find it difficult to cope. However, if first suppliers of fuel are obliged to buy permits there is a revenue from those permits. Some money. The bulk of this money should be distributed to people per capita.

In a global system that would be a cash bonanza to the world's poor and would help them cope with the rising prices caused by oil depletion. How? you ask. If the cap is screwed down faster than the rate of fossil fuel depletion the energy companies always need to have permits before they can sell anything. They will need to part with their cash. And this cash would go to everyone equally. But 80% of the world's population have a life style with less than the average carbon intensity. So although prices for them would rise the revenue they would get from a per capita distribution of the permit revenue, would be even more. Indeed for the world's poor the higher the carbon price the higher the per capita payment - which would exceed the increased prices they pay.

So you would have a system in which the world's rich and the world's energy companies would be obliged to pay the world's poor for the right to pollute the atmosphere and would be obliged to pay very highly indeed. Which is how it should be.

Make the world's energy suppliers buy the right to pollute the planet from the world's poor and make them pay very highly by screwing down the cap as quickly as possible - and quicker than the rate of depletion both because of the urgency of the climate crisis and because of the need to drive an emergency transformation of the economy.

Where I disagree with Mark Lynas is his idea that the state should determine what happens to the auction revenues from an upstream cap. Sorry - I regard the earth's atmosphere as a commons that belongs to us all equally - not to corporations and not to governments either. The administration of a commons should be managed as a commons - by a trust that is responsible in law to manage it it in the interests of everyone with everyone equally benefiting if there is money involved.

Dr. Frans B. Roos, Ph.D.
Condo home E-2, 276/25 Moo 4, Beung, Sriracha, Chonburi 20230, Thailand
N/S Twrs. Cntrl. Cty. 1092/72 Bangna-Trad, km-3, Bangkok 10260, Thailand
E-mail: fransb@csloxinfo.com
This mail is Anti Virus scanned at the sender’s computer.

Mark Lynas,
And I lift from your article:

“The rest of us simply find fossil fuels becoming more expensive and change our behaviour accordingly.”

You are dreaming Mark Lynas, obviously you have not driven on the Motorway or for that matter on the streets in Thailand where gasoline now is 39 Thai Baht a liter. This is in a country where the minimum daily wage is 153 Thai Baht. Where our senior secretary in the office plugs away a whole month for a salary of 9,000 Thai Baht and whose husband as Manager of the Gardening Department has a salary of 20,000 Thai Baht a month. So between the two of them they pull in 29,000 Thai Baht a month. With that income they have to buy a house, send 3-children to school, buy food and clothing, pay medical insurance to name but a few of their expenses. People with this type income are classed as “middle class” in Thailand and these “middle class” have to have a SUV and the capitalist banks make sixty month loans available to lasso these type people.
The speed limit on the Motorway is 120KPH and they go past me as if I’m standing still. And you are talking about changing behavior, you must be joking. My car gives me at my type of driving 17-Kilometer/ liter. Thais with the identical car do good to get 12-kilomer/liter because of their irrational way of driving their vehicle, like constantly pumping the gas pedal (a leftover from driving a three wheel pedal cab).
Mark, wake up, there is no hope, never, that people are going to change their behavior for the benefit of the environment. The word is: GREEEEEEEEEEEED.
Sincerely,
DrFransBRoosPhD

Unless I am missing something, the whole system of low users selling carbon emiisions to high carbon users, simply reditributes carbon emissions, it does not reduce them:. Why is this even being considerd a a plan? It does not reduce overall carbon emissions, which surely should be the aim.