Cap and Share

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Cap and Share is the name of both an approach and a campaign to halt climate change. It is based on the belief that every human being has a right to an equal share of the Earth's very limited capacity to accept further greenhouse gas emissions before the temperature target adopted by the European Union, a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise in the Earth's average temperature over that in pre-industrial times, is exceeded. It wants global emissions to be capped at their current level and then brought down year by year at a rate consistent with achieving the temperature target. Each year, the emissions tonnage involved would be shared equally amongst the Earth's adult population, each of whom would receive a certificate for their individual entitlement. The recipients would then sell their certificates through the banking system to oil, coal and gas producers who would need to acquire enough of them to cover the carbon dioxide emissions from every tonne of fossil fuel they sold. The advantage of the system is that it provides everyone with at least partial compensation for the higher cost of fossil fuels that limiting their availability would necessarily involve.

The policy was devised by Feasta (The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) in 2005 and 2006. It is partly an extension and popularisation of the Contraction and Convergence proposal developed by the Global Commons Institute, which also calls for an equal per capita distribution of emissions. Cap and Share differs in that it insists that emissions allocations should be distributed equally to individuals as their right, whereas Contraction and Convergence (C&C) allows governments to decide if this is the way they wish to share out what is, essentially, their national allocation. C&C also allows for (but does not insist on) a convergence period, during which the richer countries would receive higher per capita emissions allowances than poorer countries. Cap and Share says people in rich countries should get the same emissions entitlement as those in poor countries from the start, but suggests that in the early years of the system, a portion of everyone's emissions entitlement should be held back and distributed to governments of countries which were facing exceptional difficulties in adapting to climate change or to low levels of fossil energy use. The governments involved would sell their certificates to raise money for remedial works. For example, the government of Bangladesh might sell its allocation to pay for better defences against rising sea levels.

In late 2006 Feasta helped start a grassroots campaign in Ireland and Britain called Cap and Share to further the policy with the general public and legislators. The principles behind Cap and Share are seen as being applicable at all levels - from national, to regional (such as the EU) and ultimately globally. For instance it would be possible to recast the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme as a cap and share scheme and this is one of the campaign's goals.

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[edit] The policy

Principles

1. That a ceiling or cap on carbon dioxide and other green house gas (ghg) emissions should be calculated that prevents an average global temperature rise of over 2 degrees Celsius.

2. That the right to emit such ghgs is a human right, and should be shared on an equal-per-capita basis, with permits going to each individual rather than to their governments.

3. That the permits would be saleable through the post office and banking system to the importers and producers of fossil fuels who would need to acquire enough permits to cover the emissions from the fuels they introduce.

4. That any national or European Union scheme should be designed as a possible prototype for a global system that will also help set the conditions for the alleviation of poverty and the maintenance of biodiversity.

[edit] The campaign

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The Cap and Share campaign appears to aim for three complementary levels and areas of activity:

  • Policy research through think tanks
  • The focussed lobbying of legislators
  • The education and motivation of public opinion

As of 1 January 2007, the Cap and Share organisation was developing a websystem to further these aims with (1) A Cap and Share poster website, and (2) A wiki based websystem called Climate Cooperation using a version of the same MediaWiki software that drives Wikipedia. the wiki has three main sections:

  • An Information section using the default Main namespace
  • A Voices section for Messages to the Future and for considering the psychology of climate change
  • Action sections for each country or region - based on Postcodes or locations - for grassroots campaigning with banks of resources

[edit] Links

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