I want Al Gore to go first.
Via Carbon Brief:
A group of academics this week argued that policymakers need to focus changing individuals’ behaviour, rather than ineffective ‘top-down’ measures to address climate change. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research at the Royal Society, the experts argued that current policies that aim to keep warming to two degrees – such as voluntary targets, carbon markets, and renewable energy subsidies – were failing.
The experts said it was time for more bottom-up, radical, climate action. Here’s three proposals they argued might work.
1) A ‘carbon card’
One proposal recommended consumers carried a ‘carbon card’ to track their energy consumption. By tracking consumption, people that used less could be rewarded, while those with large ‘carbon footprints’ would have to pay to pollute.
People would use their cards to buy energy, or fuel for their cars, with those amounts converted into carbon dioxide emissions (with the help of a little extra data on the energy efficiency of people’s homes, and how much petrol their cars needed). Those that came in under a government-allocated amount could then sell their extra carbon credits to those that wanted to emit more – a system known as ‘personal carbon trading’.