War Bonds for the Climate Effort
To raise the money for the war effort during World War II the government could have raised taxes. What they did instead was create war bonds that allowed everyone to take responsibility and be engaged in the war effort by making an investment. Over half of the population of the United States participated in this effort.
Like the war, climate change is a major problem facing society. A problem that will not fix itself. A problem that will take an effort of the majority of the population to correct. Not all of us can be on the front lines by installing solar collectors or insulating our walls although we can support those on the front lines. Like a war, there will be those who are for it and those who are against it.
The current top strategies for fighting the battle on climate change are cap-and-trade, Renewable Energy Certificates, and a carbon tax. These strategies are used as weapons. They attacks the problem in an indirect way by making fossil fuels less attractive, even hurtful, with the hope that we will use less. With the hope that we will change.
The real weapons in the fight for climate change are energy efficiency, energy storage, and renewable power. Like the technologies of war, they have to be paid for. War bonds went directly to that effort. Unlike the technologies of war, these technologies pay for themselves over time. The Empire State Building retrofit and the Deutsche Bank report on grid parity for solar energy are two examples.
Unlike the war, climate change is an internal problem that we all contribute to as members of this society. It is called our carbon footprint.
In a simple twist on war bonds we can fight climate change with a strategy that will finance the weapons of this battle while allowing the majority of us to take responsibility for our carbon footprint and become engaged in the effort.
I propose a new model, with an analogy to war bonds. This model would raise the capital needed to fight climate change while at the same time allowing companies and individuals to take measurable action for their carbon footprint by making incremental investments in Carbon “war bonds”. The units for these investments would be equivalent to cost of a ton of carbon dioxide. The number of units purchased would be equivalent to the metric tons of CO2e they wish to offset. As with war bonds, the money would be tied up for some time but it would be returned with interest. In the meantime this dedicated pool of money is being put to work creating the weapons in the fight on climate change; energy efficiency, energy storage, and renewable power. Companies and individuals who are ready to go on the offensive and install renewable energy or make a major energy retrofit would use this model to finance those projects.
This new savings/investment model would use the infrastructure of existing financial institutions. The price of carbon would remain stable. This could be accomplished with or without government intervention.
These Carbon “war bonds” will raise the capital to finance the weapons of mass decarbonization. They would help companies appease shareholders, sustainable supply chain requirements, and consumers. They would allow all of us to do what we can, with what we have, where we are.
They embrace the ideals of a sense of duty, investing in the future, and being a part of the greater good.
The method of quantitatively offsetting one’s carbon footprint with investments in clean energy was developed by Carbon Xprint.
Originally posted Nov 16, 2015
