Not long ago, a group of important environmental leaders published an essay on Gristmill -- "Creating an Earth Atmospheric Trust" -- about Peter Barnes' Sky Trust proposal. As it happens, Rockridge is about to release an analysis comparing Sky Trust with the Lieberman-Warner bill. We particularly evaluate what we call "cognitive policy," which is the set of ideas and values that underlie a legislative or social policy.
The Rockridge Institute endorses the key ideas in the Sky Trust. The reasons for our endorsement are best understood by looking at the cognitive policy behind it. This "cognitive dimension" of their policy is the source of inspiration that makes the Sky Trust strong.
The most fundamental principle behind this entire endeavor is this:
An effective policy must gain popular acceptance if it is to stand the test of time and it must do so for the right reasons, namely because it promotes the right long-term values in the minds of citizens.
The Sky Trust proposal is an exemplary effort to instill this principle firmly in policy.
Keeping Our Air Safe and Clean
The proposal begins with a cognitive foundation that contextualize the problem. This provides the moral context for addressing the climate crisis and shapes the material policy that emerges from it.
We all own the air.
This idea makes sense when we think about how important air is for our survival. It carries rain across great distances to water our crops and quench our thirst. It fills our lungs, bubbles in our veins, and feeds every cell in our bodies. We cannot live without it. This fundamental truth evokes a moral sentiment -- the air belongs to every human being as a birth right.
The authors claim "the core of this system is the idea of a common asset trust." What they mean by this -- translated into key concepts -- is two things: (1) We all own the air, and (2) The inherent worth of the air should be preserved for everyone. It is easy to see why a "trust" makes sense as a way to preserve our air when these concepts are clearly articulated.
Dumping carbon pollution into our air is harmful.
This idea provides the motivation to limit the amount of carbon pollution dumped into the air. The policy mechanism that accomplishes this goal is called a "carbon cap." A maximum amount of carbon pollution is allowed in any given year. As time goes on, the amount is reduced until it reaches a safe level.
Companies should pay the cost of doing business.
We all know that companies have been dumping pollution into our air -- carbon dioxide that threatens to take our rain away and fill our lungs with noxious gas. The companies don't own the air. They don't depend on it to survive. And, here's the clincher, they have damaged our air without paying for it. The market is currently set up in a way that doesn't recognize the value of clean air.
So what does a policy based on these ideas look like? Limit the amount of pollution that can be dumped into our air -- a carbon cap -- and charge companies for dumping permits. This is a cap-and-auction policy. It grew out of two simple ideas: (1) we own the air, and (2) companies have damaged it without paying.
Where Does the Money Go?
There are three ways the money received from auctioning carbon dumping permits can be used:
- Money can be given to the polluting corporations, as a financial incentive for them to invest in pollution reduction technology.
- Money can go to the public in the form of public interest programs.
- Or, money can go directly to all people -- the owners of the air.
Option (1) is ruled out by the moral context of the foundational ideas. The distribution between (2) and (3) depends on how the situation is understood. Many proposals argue that all of the money should go into (2). Here are two common ideas behind such policies:
The money should benefit everyone.
A large sum -- trillions of dollars for a global initiative -- is raised each year. This money is a form of wealth created by preserving the commons. It should be used to benefit everyone equally.
Invest in community.
Wealth has been pooled together so that it can provide what no individual could afford on his or her own. New infrastructure can be built that eases the transition to a clean energy economy.
The Sky Trust proposal incorporates the following additional ideas to persuade readers that a significant amount of the money should also go to (3):
Most of the costs should fall on those who can most easily afford them.
Any limits placed on carbon pollution will cause energy prices to rise. The poorest people cannot afford to pay -- and there will be a backlash if price hikes are too large. This can be resolved by giving money directly back to people to offset the price increase. It also creates the right incentives -- guzzlers pay more and conservers pay less.
The idea of a commons becomes tangible.
Every time a polluter dumps garbage into our air, we are compensated for it. People see a direct benefit to preserving the commons every time more money arrives. This reinforces the idea that a commons exists and it is valuable.
Get people directly involved in protecting the commons.
Large-scale investments in infrastructure often deal directly with companies. Everyday people have a passive role when this happens. In contrast, when an individual receives a direct payment for carbon clean-up, she is personally involved in the process and constantly reminded of benefits that come from cleaning up our air.
These ideas culminate in a policy recommendation: distribute enough of the money to people so that rising energy costs are offset for the poorest among us. Along the way, a concrete understanding of the commons emerges that helps sustain lasting popular support.
The concept of shared ownership in this view of a 'capitalist commons' is a blend of private ownership and common wealth. It transcends the apparent dichotomy between historical capitalist notions that disregard the inherent worth of nature in economic considerations and the environmental ethic that encourages preservation of ecological wealth to the exclusion of private property interests.
The strategic advantage gained by this blend is that it builds upon a popular understanding of ownership to make the notion of a shared commons comprehensible.
The Big Picture
We can now put the pieces together and look at the proposal as a whole. In a nutshell, it is this:
Place a cap on the amount of carbon dumped into our air. Charge polluting companies for permits to pollute our air. Distribute some of the money to the people who own the air to compensate for our air being harmed and to alleviate the burden of rising energy costs. Use the rest of the money to change how we generate energy and clean up the air.
The Sky Trust is a promising proposal that deserves thoughtful consideration.
Its hidden "cognitive dimension" is crucial for achieving popular support. It needs to be seen, understood, and discussed. The key ideas behind policy proposals are often implicit in the legislative process. They need to be revealed and openly debated. We can't afford to take them for granted anymore, especially with the challenges we face from the climate crisis.
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Comments
View as Flat
ce1907 Posted 8:33 pm
09 Jan 2008
fire all of you
and hire someone trained to count votes in Congress
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 12:01 am
10 Jan 2008
If we keep doing what we are doing now, we will keep getting what are getting now. Dire consequences could result from "staying the course" marked by the selfish, imperious choices of the managers of the world's political economy and their bought-and-paid-for politicians to maximally expand the global economy, regardless of Earth's limited capacity to support much more unlimited growth of big-business activity.
Allowing soon to become unsustainable global economic activity to simply run its current course, come what may, could threaten the lives of our children, coming generations, biodiversity, global ecosystems and the integrity of Earth.
What kind of a future do we intend for our children? If we keep doing what we are doing now, we could end up leaving our children a world that is unfit for human habitation. The integrity of the Earth and life as we know it could become dangerously undermined and irreversibly diminished by adamant efforts to endlessly expand the interlocking national economies, to advocate unrestrained per capita consumption of scarce resources, and to continuously condone the unbridled increase of absolute global human population numbers on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth.
Perhaps our leaders will consider how the unrestrained industrialization activities of the species, Homo sapiens, could become patently unsustainable in this wondrous planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit ..... and not to overwhelm, I suppose.
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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setb Posted 1:59 am
10 Jan 2008
It will be very easy to explain to the public.
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Moral Progressive Posted 6:28 am
10 Jan 2008
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DavidP Posted 7:30 am
10 Jan 2008
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bookerly Posted 10:38 am
10 Jan 2008
Any proposal that plans to give money "back" to poor people has imbedded in it the false assumption that they had the money to pay the higher prices in the first place.
Sigh. Often they don't. Promises to offset higher prices down the road are like promises to offset carbon emissions twenty years after the fact.
They miss the point.
patrick in Beijing
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ce1907 Posted 11:31 am
10 Jan 2008
that means dealing with the Congress that will be here in the near future
focus on what is possible
or get nothing
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bookerly Posted 12:41 pm
10 Jan 2008
Dear ce1907,
If you were talking to me (hard to be sure)(smile). I am focusing on the current timeline.
One of the key questions for any plan such as this is who will pay, and whether it will actively seek to be just, or merely be another way of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
The plan says it will give money back. That assumes the poor must first pay the money, then after some period of time, there will be some mechanism to return some of that money to them.
Which assumes that they have the money, and can happily pay it knowing that some day in the future it will come back.
Wrong. Bad assumption.
FWIW, it should be noted that the poor are not the main contributors to global warming, and therefore punishing them with regressive tax proposals is extremely unfair, to say the least.
An alternative?? Heavy taxes on vehicles with low mileage and luxury vehicles (I mean HEAVY taxes). No tax deductions for second homes, for homes above a (to be determined) square footage, tax penalties on items like private boats, planes, other wasteful toys.
Tax credits for people who own no cars (families), live in dense urban areas, live in relatively small units (sq. footage), rent and have no children.
patrick in Beijing
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Colin Wright Posted 4:24 pm
10 Jan 2008
Well, if people really are the rational, self-interested automatons that capitalism pre-supposes, then if poor people receive a payment from polluting corporations, then it is in their interest to keep receiving those payments. I would in fact want the corporations to pollute even more, so I would get more money. Or am I missing something?
Also, let's say I'm morally opposed to corporations polluting the atmosphere and support only efforts towards renewables. Then the Sky Trust would implicate me in a system I believed was evil.
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ce1907 Posted 4:43 pm
10 Jan 2008
will it significantly reduce CO2
will it pass Congress
Answer those first, or be noble and irrelevant.
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bookerly Posted 6:03 pm
10 Jan 2008
Dear Ce1907,
I am sorry that those are not the only two questions. They may be the top two for upper middle class Americans, but for many people they are not the exclusive questions.
For people who need to feed their families, it is not about being noble, it is about survival.
Can something that is seen as clearly unfair to working folk and the poor pass Congress? Maybe, maybe not. But you start off with a weaker coalition if you start off with a bad bill.
Does it matter? Maybe I am irrelevant to you, but when I look at how poor the energy legislation passed this year was, it seems to me that we need to do better. If you think you can do better by putting together a coalition of the rich and indifferent, go ahead.
I think that one of the reasons that environmentalism has largely failed to be important to the vast majority of Americans has been that environmentalists have tried to make the issue narrow and technical rather than central to the lives of Americans.
But maybe that's just me.
patrick in Beijing
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ce1907 Posted 10:11 pm
10 Jan 2008
Incomplete success is not failure. When I was young, a river in the United States burst into flames. That no longer happens.
A burning river helped galvanize public support for the CWA. The rivers are not clean enough yet, but they no longer burn. Some have been fooled into thinking the job is done. In a democracy, public support must be gathered and directed to next steps.
If we wait until the public can see the burning rivers of climate change, it will be too late. It may be too late even now.
There is no support in the public, or in the Congress, for a climate bill that will tear apart exitsing economic relationships. It may be necessary. It may be good. The votes are not there, and will not be there for the foreseeable future.
Fact.
Instead, Greens must build an alternative approach. Solar, geo, wind, public transport, etc. Build confidence that there is a new way of life that works. Then we may hope that there will be support for a new way of life, and the votes may be there for more fundamental change.
Will the poor suffer in the coming climate crisis, whatever shape it takes? Without a doubt. But unless you envision the Congress taken over by the Vanguard of the Green, no more radical action is possible.
And i am not so sure that the Vanguard of the Green have all the answers.
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johnmcc793 Posted 12:12 am
11 Jan 2008
You said:
[I think that one of the reasons that environmentalism has largely failed to be important to the vast majority of Americans has been that environmentalists have tried to make the issue narrow and technical rather than central to the lives of Americans.]
Patrick, You are not alone saying this. Many people view we US environmentalists as out of touch and out of contact with people who live paycheck to paycheck.
Yes, elected officials may only be in touch (or are likely to listen to) with those who have accountants handling their paycheck and dividend checks, etc.
How to get the national environmental groups to take their CO2 mitigation plans and legislative proposals down to the level of the millions of minimum wage families struggling to keep it together is a challenge they seem not to be carrying very well.
I am sick to death of the rapid fire suggestions that we should all bug plug-in hybrids, insulate our walls, caulk the windows, buy most energy efficient appliances, and install solar collectors on our roofs. Well, the average American cannot pay their outstanding credit and mortgage debt today...and there is a real threat of a US and possible global recession.
Sorry for the mundane facts about life in America but they get to the heart of why the 80% reduction by 2050 is not going to happen...however much we need that.
Time to get real about climate change and stop floating notions that mitigation is going to be affordable.
Lets hear about mitigation plans that start with accommodating the economic survival needs of the 90 percent of Americans who's income is less than their debt.
John L. McCormick
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dmbtiger Posted 1:50 am
11 Jan 2008
And while we are at it we need to answer the #1 question and figure out how to replace a corrupt government with one not in the pay of corporate polluters. It doesn't matter whether we vote Democrat or Republican as long as corporations keep pumping in enough money to buy the votes of both parties on any bill that will allow them to continue to rip off the rest of us. All we'll get is the same ol' packaged in Newspeak. And the misguided (?) `liberals' will go back to sleep until they are needed to do another dance to convinced the public that someone has their interests at heart.
Dan
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bookerly Posted 10:59 am
12 Jan 2008
Dear John,
Thanks for the support!! You are correct that we need to think differently if we want to make progress.
Instead of carbon taxes, taxing things that produce grossly greater amounts of carbon (such as Humvees, SUVs and yachts) to the max would have more of an impact. And be fairer.
We could also put luxury taxes on second homes as well as homes over a certain square footage. Then we could provide tax credits for people who live in homes under a certain square footage, as well as providing tax credits for renters who live in core urban areas.
This way, we encourage environmentally friendly behavior while punishing that which is really bad for the environment, without torturing the middle class.
Dan,
You have a valid point. In some ways it is better to ban things like mansions and humvees, but that seems to me to be even more impractical (I am in favor of it, however!!).
One of the problems with the corrupt American system of government is that every politician chants like a mantra "Oh, we can't raise taxes". Why the hell can't we raise taxes on the wealthy?
"Oh, they wouldn't like it." And what the ten percent cares matters so much more than what the ninety percent cares? Ah, well.....
Alas, the ten percent controls the media, and they ensure that only the properly framed topics and issues are raised.
What is to be done?
patrick in Beijing
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jhill Posted 3:24 pm
12 Jan 2008
First, I just need to say that Sky Trust is not being billed as "the solution". I think there has been some confusion here. There isn't a single solution and many of the suggestions made by previous posters are also important or even necessary. Sky Trust doesn't preclude other means of addressing the problem; in fact, it will assist those other approaches - I'll get to this in a moment.
But a proposal along the lines of Sky Trust is a critical element of any plan to successfully address global warming. That's because Sky Trust is an approach that addresses the role businesses have in this problem and does so in a way that encourages them to change.
While it may be safe to assume that businesses will pass on these costs to consumers, that's not the end of it. (And there's no reason that those costs can't - and shouldn't - be immediately negated by price offsets for the working and middle classes.) Ultimately, regardless of how businesses pass on the costs, it will be in their economic interest to reduce their emissions because that will reduce their costs and thus increase their profits. Right now businesses don't have that incentive and that's the key.
What this means, among other things, is that it will become in the financial interest of companies to begin investing in technologies that reduce their carbon emissions.
This will also have the effect of discouraging wasteful energy expenditures from Hummers to mansions because they will become more expensive. Should we also levy additional taxes on such items? Probably, given that the very rich aren't going to be adequately influenced by such taxes when they have millions to spare. But we should be careful not to place the burden on consumers while ignoring the role of businesses and capitalism.
Jessica
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bookerly Posted 8:37 pm
12 Jan 2008
Dear Jessica,
I am 100% in favor of not putting all the responsibility for global warming on consumers (read individuals). I have often argued that doing so is one of the weaknesses of the environmental movement in that it allows both corporations and other organizations (government (think pentagon), educational, religious, ngo, and any others) to shift the blame.
BUT. You say that the offsets should be negated "immediately" by price decreases for the middle and working class (and, umm, the very poor, among whom are included a fair number of retirees).
What kind of mechanism can make that happen?
I am not that trusting. I keep reading about higher food prices worldwide caused by..... environmentalists (at least THEY say THEY are) who have pushed corn based ethanol, which has raised food prices to the point that the poor are getting much poorer.
And when people point this out to them, they ignore it and keep talking about how "technically" great corn ethanol is. (Where's my guillotine when I need it?)...
(The last was a joke, I was just read the great one...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JA12Dj01.html ...
) (LOL) (Then weep a while as real life replace satire.)
So, if we say to the poor, hey, we're gonna do this and don't worry (wink, wink), we'll take care of you, well some of them (us) might not be so trusting. Environmentalists don't have a great record in this regard (in fact, don't have ANY record - of course I mean white MSEG, not the environmental justice movement).
But you should not take this personally, I don't know you and do appreciate your comments.
I'm just not that trusting these days.... (blame it on the corn ethanol folks - the enemies of humanity).
patrick in Beijing
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:24 pm
12 Jan 2008
At some point in time, perhaps sooner rather than later, the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and their newly-rich minions in the mass media, in particular, will acknowledge what many people are seeing:
THE BUSINESS-AS-USUAL, SEEMINGLY ENDLESS EXPANSION OF LARGE-SCALE ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION ACTIVITIES NOW ENGULFING THE SURFACE OF EARTH CANNOT MUCH LONGER BE SUSTAINED ON A RELATIVELY SMALL, EVIDENTLY FINITE, NOTICEABLY FRANGIBLE PLANET WITH THE SIZE AND MAKEUP OF EARTH.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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