Force for Good has identified the need for more effective global frameworks of law and regulation  to drive the market in sustainable directions. It argues that global companies must work proactively and cooperatively with NGOs, other companies and international organisations to ensure those frameworks.

Writing as an ecological economist I applaud this idea. The market can only operate effectively if it remains within ecological capacity limits and if the distributive consequences of limiting the call on the earth's resources are handled equitably. That requires watertight policy mechanisms with an eye for fairness. After that the market can be allowed to do its job.

Above everything else the need for frameworks is strongest in dealing with the climate crisis. That means limiting use of the earth's atmosphere as a greenhouse gas dump equitably - and limiting it down to zero emissions.

In the last few years climate science has moved on rapidly and we have to accept that what the climate scientists are saying has become positively alarming. For example, a team led by James Hansen, suggest that we are already over the safe limit for CO2 in the atmosphere. In their text they write:

".....even with phase-out of coal emissions and assuming IPCC oil and gas reserves, CO2 would remain above 350 ppm for more than two centuries. Ongoing Arctic and ice sheet changes, examples of rapid paleoclimate change, and other criteria cited above all drive us to consider scenarios that bring CO2 more rapidly back to 350 ppm or less."

We have a limited amount of time to get down below 350ppm CO2 in the atmosphere although we are already at 387ppm CO2. (And even 350ppm may not be a safe limit - the science is uncertain). If we do not do this the earth's climate system may run away in an avalanche of self reinforcing feedbacks which will soon become impossible to stop, going right up to a 6 degree increase whether we like it or not.

In his book on the subject for which he won a science prize, Mark Lynas, explains how humanity could be wiped out. The last time a 6 degree temperature increase happened,  at the end of the Permian period,  95% of all species died through a series of kill mechanisms which particularly include eruptions of methane gas from the sea which explode in the air with the force of nuclear weapons.

So the race is on to deal to create a framework for the climate global emergency. Part of that framework will now have to include developing technologies and approaches to take CO2 out the atmosphere. The best thinking on that, endorsed by Hansen, is "locking in" the ability of bio-mass to take CO2 out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis. When the biomass degrades, is harvested, or burns, the carbon goes back. However, biomass can be pyrolised (baked in the absence of oxygen driving off useful chemicals and gases and leaving char). The remaining char(coal) can be stored in soil where it acts as a soil improver and appears to be stable over centuries. So there is a way of dealing with the overshoot.

In the meantime however we have to get down emissions as quickly as possible.  It is theoretically possible to envisage a low level of greenhouse emissions still continuing but more than counterbalanced by a strategy that enhances sinks (eg afforestation + biochar strategy). This would have the net effect of taking more CO2 out of the atmosphere than is being put in. Thus, over a period of time, one could envisage the level of CO2 falling to below 350ppm - or to the pre- industrial level  - even though some small level of emissions continued.  However, for all intents and purposes to get the level of CO2 down means that emissions must fall to zero - plus there must be an additional strategy to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. That's the formidable scale of the challenge.

At the moment the conventional wisdom about this is to pursue the further extension of cap and trade emissions control systems. However, the campaign I work with proposes another approach called 'Cap and Share'. Cap and Share can be either used with Cap and Trade systems, covering that part of emissions that they don't deal with. Or it could even replace Cap and Trade.

At the moment Cap and Share is currently being considered by the Irish government as a way of controlling its transport emissions.

Cap and Share focuses on the control of carbon emissions "upstream". Current approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions operate as if we are going to have to get 6 billion people and hundreds of thousands of companies to mend their ways and reduce their carbon consumption. Of course this is going to have to happen. But the most effective way of making it happen is to have a framework in which the few thousand companies who introduce fossil fuels into the world economy (or into an individual national economy) in the first place are required to have permits before they are allowed to sell fossil fuels.

These permits would be denominated in the greenhouse gas content of the fuel that they want to sell, when burned. The permits would be limited in number and the number brought down over time as quickly as possible. That would force everyone else to adjust to a reduction in carbon emissions as a fait accomplis.  www.capandshare.org

Of course this would drive up carbon and energy prices considerably. There is not getting away from the fact that that's what  is required to do the job effectively and prevent that 6 degree wipe out. But there is also a need to make the process equitable and make it palatable to publics and citizens. As I wrote above - frameworks must do the job of setting the ecological capacity limits. But the policies must do that in an equitable fashion and vulnerable people helped to adjust. There would be a real danger that rising energy prices would drive the poor out of the energy market as they would not have the purchasing power to meet the rising energy costs.

Considering the fact that the poor usually least responsible for the climate crisis and, considering the idea that, if we are selling rental rights to use the earth's atmosphere then we are selling the use of a  common resource that belongs to us all equally, then our cap and share campaign thinks it fair that most of the money from the sales of these permits is shared equally.

That can either be done by auctioning the permits and then distributing the permit sales on a per capita basis - or by distributing permits to sell fossil fuels to the people. This would oblige the energy suppliers to buy their rights to sell from citizens (via market makers like post offices and banks). The first approach is the Cap and Dividend mechanism favoured by many people in the USA. The latter is Cap and Share. I and my colleagues favour Cap and Share but would be happy with cap and dividend if it was adminstered by an independent trust, at arms length to governments. Lots of people suspect that if governments auctioned permits, then citizens wouldn't see much of the auction revenue for long.

Whichever of the two ways that you do this you would end up with a climate control framework that lead to a considerable income flow to the poor people of the planet. The global climate crisis is overwhelmingly created by the energy rich, carbon intensive lifestyle of the developed nations. Most poor people use few fossil fuels and have access to few of the goods that have been produced by the use of fossil fuels. (Embedded carbon). As such, in a global system, most people would make more from the sale of permits than they lost in having to pay the higher carbon prices in fuel and the goods partly made with the fuel. That seems entirely fair. People pay for carbon and people get paid if they don't use it. That's an equalitarian incentive system.

There have been calculations of how much. For example, a global cap and share scheme, if applied in South Africa would benefit 70% of the population.

At just 25 euros per tonne of CO2 the lowest income decile would have a net income increase of some 48% rising to an increase of 95% at 50 euros a tonne.   The second decile income group would enjoy a 24% increase at 25 euros/t and 49%  at 50euros/t CO2 and the third decile 19% increase and 39%.

Although the higher 3, and particularly, the top 2, deciles would lose out, neverthetheless this is not by huge amounts except at very high carbon prices....

What this shows is the potential of a carbon price in which everyone shares equally to be a major mechanism for redistributing income while, at the same time, shifting competitiveness and incentives from fossil fuels to renewables and energy saving....