While watching Sky News about Green Britain I heard an interesting idea that appeals to me.

Each person be given a certain number of 'Carbon Credits' for the year. You are only allowed to make as much carbon as they give you credits for, if you want more then you must pay for it.

This would bring up a two problems that I see.

-The rich could simply ignore the credits and buy more when they run out.
-The poor will have more difficulty traveling.

So, I want to know, would you pay for more credits so you could travel more? Would you sit in the dark for a few months for an extra trip?

Any other thoughts?

I could probably manage. I don't own a car, walk to (and often from) work (4 miles), and take public transit when I can't walk due to weather or other circumstances.

I'm obsessive about turning off lights in rooms when I leave them, I don't watch much TV, I garden and grow lots of my own food during the warmer months.

Yes, if I needed more credits to take a trip, I would buy them. Or do without something (maybe walk more assiduously home from work, which is the direction I'm more likely to be lazy and take the bus) in order to conserve them.

quote:

Originally posted by Landire:
So, I want to know, would you pay for more credits so you could travel more? Would you sit in the dark for a few months for an extra trip?

If I were going to pay for extra credits, it would be for travel, but I'd probably be more likely to invest some bucks in alternate energy technology to reduce my carbon usage. In fact, I'm doing that now...installing solar energy support for my electricity and looking into biodiesel as well.

quote:

Any other thoughts?

I think that just the idea of tracking carbon use, even if you don't tax it, will have a positive effect. There's lots of evidence that people who log their eating lose weight and people who log their savings save more. It's human nature: if you can see your performance, you're more likely to improve.

My question if you were going to tax this would be...how do you track it? How would you identify a person's overall carbon use? That seems complicated and a little scary. I DO think you could start providing feedback in a number of cases. For example, when you gas up, there could be a notification of how much carbon the fuel you just bought will generate.

My electricity bill (which comes from Green Mountain) tells me every month how much CO2 I'm avoiding by subscribing to their "pure wind energy" plan, and that sort of inspires me to stick with that plan, even though it costs a bit more.

My free thoughts...

La

what about doing it on a sliding scale as far as income goes. Also there could be average of say five years of carbon use for individuals and go off that before setting a blanket tax.

Mary touched on the subject of carbon offsets on the Eco Travel Logue last month, as did Eric at the Adventure Logue. FYI.