Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The EU, UK and Australia are funding experiments in “flexible” carbon rationing, in which people receive a set weekly carbon allowance, with a mobile app to deduct from their allowance.
Experiments in setting individuals a carbon allowance have been trialled from Finland to Australia, and some have proved popular. But can carbon rationing ever be fair?
By Frank Swain
18th February 2020Once a day, Katja Suhonen opens her phone to check on her carbon footprint. Every journey she makes in her home city of Lahti, a city in the south of Finland, is studied by an experimental app called CitiCap and the carbon impact of her travel choices deducted from a weekly budget.
“I have mainly travelled around by bike, public transport and walking before even using CitiCap, so it hasn’t really changed my daily routine,” says Suhonen, an early adopter of the voluntary monitoring scheme. “However, now I try to avoid private car even more than before.” If she has any credits left by the end of the week, she can exchange them for gifts like coffee or a free bike tune-up in participating businesses. Her journeys are automatically tracked by the app, and she only needs to manually input details such as how many passengers she is with if she is travelling by car.
The CitiCap app is funded by the EU’s Urban Innovative Actions, which supports projects that test out “new and unproven solutions” to issues faced by cities. In Lahti, that means cutting the impact of residents’ travel around the city. While Finland has plans to be carbon neutral by 2035, Lahti aims to get there a decade earlier. The city has already halved its carbon emissions since 1990 but to get to net zero will take a lot more work. Transport is set to be a key part of that.
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On the other side of world, researchers at Australia’s Southern Cross University were planning their own experiment on Norfolk Island, a tiny Australian territory 1,500 kilometres from the mainland. With only one natural gas supplier, one power company, and a handful of petrol stations, it was the perfect self-contained place to study people’s fossil fuel use. In 2013, a quarter of the island’s 800 households were recruited to a carbon reduction scheme.
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Back in the UK, Adam Hardy, campaign director of CarbonRationing.org, is trying to take this idea to the next level. Where the Lahti experiment focuses only on incentivising lower emissions, Hardy wants to see disincentives for individuals who over-emit. He envisions a nationwide “total carbon rationing” programme that goes all the way back to the energy supplier, to give a figure for the carbon emissions in the atmosphere as a result of any given product. This would require auditing the carbon footprint of the supply chain of everything sold in the UK, including imports.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200217-can-rationing-carbon-help-fight-climate-change
I feel especially sorry for Norfolk Island, the victims of Australia’s personal carbon allowance trial.
Anywhere else the trial subject could ahem accidentally erase the app when it gets too annoying, and pretty much get on with their normal life.
But Norfolk Island is powerless to refuse. After their economy was ruined by the GFC, to save themselves the islanders had to accept any terms Australia was willing to offer. In 2015 they agreed to give up self rule. I doubt it was made clear at the time to islanders that this agreement to give up self rule also included being treated as a social petri dish for the Australian Government’s dystopian personal carbon allowance experiments.
There is the hope that given enough rope the activists will ‘h@ng themselves’ and the general public will wake up to their true agenda, however they employ a Fabian tactic (after Fabius Maximus Verrucosus) of hit and run or a ratchet effect, mission creep, by gradually and successfully so far, edging the Overton window from acceptable -> radical -> unthinkable.
Tesla sales, Carbon flight offsets, rooftops solar units, etc, are all the modern equivalents of the Mediaeval Papal Indulgences which made the Catholic Church a rich and powerful organisation in control of society. Nothing changes. Conscience + ‘Sin’ are converting fools gold into real gold.
BTW another interesting point about Dr Hansen’s 2015 Paris COP 21 fra-d + con trick is the fact that global co2 levels have increased by 10 ppm from Jan 2016 to DEC 2019. ( see Dr Hansen’s BS and fra-d Guardian interview)
That’s 9 times MORE than Australia’s total of 1.1% of global emissions in just 4 years. Look up CSIRO Cape Grim and Mauna Loa Hawaii co2 data.
Anyone NOT see a BIGGGG problem with their sums?
Since 1989 co2 levels have increased by 60 ppm, yet in another 30 years the increase could be another 75 ppm higher, if the previous four year trend was replicated. Will they ever wake up?
Fifteen years ago I joked w a friend creating a business (oh I am sure probably exists today) “I am Carbon Neutral” where people calculate their lives carbon footprint, and then, through our website, offset by buying our carbon credits which invested into green CO2 removing action like tree planting and carbon sequestration.
You get a certificate and stickers for your car, which of course you needed to off set because they are adding to your carbon footprint. Idea had multiple tiers,
Tier 1. Personal physical contribution like breathing, off gasses, eating meat etc, a clause of course for people who eat lots of beans, u pay more!! Even includes breakdown of your body when you move on from this mortal coil.
Tier 2. Ya kids and pets…. “oh my dog is carbon neutral, what about yours….” “I decided to have more than one child because I could make them carbon neutral…”
Tier 3. Home and work (very expensive…. )
Tier 4, (my fav) Your ancestors for being alive and contributing. (put a nice certificate next to your grandparents wedding photo)
The more tiers, closer to Gia, and the subsequent showering in universal gifts of success and money because you are saving the planet more than everyone else, (its faith right)
In the end my conscious over rode my idea, I stuck to honest labour.
Earth doesn’t need saving, needs to be loved.
Governments around rhe world are digging themselves into a bl**dy great hole and the average member of society will be only too happy to fill in the hole with the government still in the bottom and plant the remains of the SJW’s as a memorial on the graveside.
A great great grandfather of mine was a guest for a while on Norfolk Island during the mid 19th century. He may have passed through that very gate pictured above.
Our one world “progressive” rulers seem increasingly desperate to send us all back to that brutal “carbon” free world of the 19th century.
Of course the ‘carbon’ they are referring to is actually carbon dioxide, an invisible trace gas that is essential for life on earth. In this context, what does ‘carbon dioxide neutral ‘ mean? Who knows, I certainly don’t.
Norfolk Island is only reached by air for most people. There is no secure harbour.
As such their carbon footprint must be huge.
I did not realise our idiot Australian government was trialling this and I wont be cooperating. However, I will happily sign a petition that requires all current and former politicians to undertake the trial and to not allow the purchasing of any carbon credits so that it is a real world test of what this will do to us poeasants.
Our former chief idiot, Malcolm Turnbull in particular must be required to take part. He is the biggest hypocrite of the lot.
Also it should be compulsory for all Extinction Rebellion members and would of course include the CO2 produced by their breathing and in the production of the glue they use to fasten themselves to the road and the mattresses they lie on. Preferably also the emission of the truck carrying the cold water that should be used to wash them off the streets into the gutters where they belong.
So will the LNP be blamed? Or will this have happened anyway after the predicted ALP landslide “victory” in May 2019 that failed? Hummmm…
It is predicted that the first multi trillionaire will arrive in 2050. My bet is that person will be someone involved in something like this.
theres an app for that..
words that have me laughing at the idiots promoting and using them
apps wether free(never) or paid (even dumber) are NOT your helpers but helping someone else help themselves to your privacy wealth and making you a target
paywave etc and the cashless idea are not free theres charges hidden
and when /if they manage to get a big enough user base those fees will become larger and unavoidable
giving your every purchase travel and lifestyle atterns to bigbiz to use and manipulate is downright stupid
but theyoung especialy do so happily
and too many of them are “helping” granma n pa by installing the same crap on their phones n pcs.
and then when they get ripped off? well thats the oldies fault for not being savvy enough to know a scam from a safe site.
hmm?
Analytics! That’s “Big Brother” by another name. How many people you see now using their “smart” phone or “smart” watch to tap on for a bus/train ride? I will stick with my Opal card thank you, at least it isn’t GPS enabled! Oh, that’s right! It’s why “Govn’t” wants you to use “smart” GPS enabled devices.
Track my Co-ords from my grave.
The EU itself could become a guinea pig for carbon (dioxide) neutrality, if Russia decides it no longer wants to sell natural gas to the EU. When the Europeans start shivering, they will either (1) beg Russia to sell them gas, in return for some land in Eastern Europe, or (2) ask the USA to ship them surplus LNG. Either way, European concern about global warming will go out the window PDQ.
“I have mainly travelled around by bike, public transport and walking before even using CitiCap, so it hasn’t really changed my daily routine,” says Suhonen, an early adopter of the voluntary monitoring scheme. “However, now I try to avoid private car even more than before.”
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No problem with “mileage scare” –
https://www.google.com/search?q=mileage+scare&oq=mileage+scare+&aqs=chrome.
– next escalation “private car avoidance” –
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ALeKk00vnqTFEExgpBVlkJJDRK1uxPFpsA%3A1583131918587&ei=Dq1cXpq4I8SvrgS93raYDQ&q=private+car+driving+scare&oq=private+car+driving+scare&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
Back in the UK, Adam Hardy, campaign director of CarbonRationing.org, is trying to take this idea to the next level.
Where the Lahti experiment focuses only on incentivising lower emissions, Hardy wants to see disincentives for individuals who over-emit. He envisions a nationwide “total carbon rationing” programme that goes all the way back to the energy supplier, to give a figure for the carbon emissions in the atmosphere as a result of any given product
– next escalation step “Green Climate Fund burnout syndrome” – GCFBS.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ALeKk00TZQXF3i9ZaETYHLkyQS7UJthPng%3A1583132339899&ei=s65cXsa8NrGorgSptYWQCw&q=gcf+climate&oq=GFC+clim&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.