Oh, how good is the math going to be down at the farmer's market?

I've talked in the past about the affect of driving a couple hundred pounds of produce a hundred miles in a beat up van or pick-up.  Some ugly numbers could (if calculated honestly) show up in politically-correct places.

I like the labelling idea - but the article correctly points out how difficult this is.

The best solution is simply to tax carbon - this way, everyone who generates CO2 while making the product would have to pay for it.  These additional costs would force them to raise their prices (or become more efficient or use renewables).  In the end, the consumer doesn't have to read the label - only the price tag.  Carbon-intensive products would simply be more expensive.

The simple way to do this is to assign a carbon-cost (in say carbon-pence/kg or grams/kg) to every primary fuel source (e.g. oil or gas at the beach or import terminal, coal at the minehead, etc).  From that point on in the supply chain every current monetary transaction (including corporation-internal) would be mirrored with a carbon-cost transaction.  Every spreadsheet would be duplicated (one for money, one for carbon).  Transaction prices would be doublets - one for money, one for carbon.  At the level of the individual consumer, the carbon "price" would be displayed to the consumer, but of course not collected.

This might sound like a lot of work, but it is unlikely to be any more than all the work involved in tracking carbon any other way.  It would be easy enough for companies to duplicate spreadsheets, and there are not that many accounting software packages that would need to be modified.  The beauty is it leverages the existing accounting mechanisms, documents and workflows.

Individuals could also carry a carbon-card which adds up their carbon purchases, letting them know what their carbon footprint is.

Imports are the biggest headache.  The embodied carbon would need to be estimated.  But that's going to have to be done anyway - at least this proposal would mean the domestic economy could deal with carbon accounting easily.

Eventually it might be decided that it would just be simpler to convert the carbon-price at source to a monetary price, and let it all flow through to the consumer in the price, rather than making people look at both price and carbon.  The revenue thus raised (from the carbon-price at source) could be used to retire regressive or anti-employment taxes.

Sounds like coming up with the process of measuring carbon will be a headache but I think it needs to be done and will be very valuable for consumers.  Yes, its obvious that the products you buy from overseas are going to have high carbon footprints, but it's good to be reminded of that with an actual number.

Also, why only focus on carbon? What about other greenhouse gases such as methane?  Products that come from livestock, such as meat, leather and cows, would have a particularly high methane footprint since cows put such large amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It would be great for all those meat eating "environmentalists" to be reminded of how climate-unfriendly meat truly is.

I can hear the stampede already..."I buy at EcoGrocerX and they carry only top of the line carbon-neutral products...don't you just adore those people there..?"  

By this I mean I am both repulsed and attracted by the concept.  Like other enviro-labelling the certification process is going to be key.  Getting a carbon-tax in place is actually a far better and more rational policy, but then again, who said we were a rational species.  

Whoever proposed that it would be easy to "just" duplicate excel sheets and make simple changes to accounting systems, does NOT get to the IT departments of large organizations often, that is for sure.  Nonetheless, the tools available for enabling carbon-accounting-transactions is a very intriguing notion - a full accounting requirement.  Going way, way beyond labelling, but maybe worth exploration.  What would be needed are transaction standards, more akin to those used in the mortgage transaction engines than in the regulatory space.  

Could business processing management (ala IBM and others ) be brought to this problem?  

What I like about the idea of a carbon label is that it allows consumers to calculate the trade-offs of buying more efficient replacements for cars, home appliances, computers and other carbon producing devices.  With the carbon label the calculation of when to replace becomes very similar to the monetary calculation consumers are used to making already.  This also allows consumers to be smart about prioritizing the replacement of their carbon producing devices.  I can determine that replacing my computer is a better carbon investment than replacing my TV.

I thought the carbon footprint on the manufacture and disposal of a car produced more carbon than use through the entire life of said car? Forget where i read that but that was my impresion.

Can anyone clarify?

Thank for the response. He was very thorough in his answer.