A non-profit group in the Adirondacks, the Adirondack Council, is making it possible for ordinary folks to do something proactive about global warming. For a minimum of $25, you can purchase a tiny quantity of future carbon emissions and remove it from circulation.
The story starts a few years ago when, faced with negligence at the Federal level, the Northeast states banded together to create the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is a cap-and-trade system that brings market forces to bear on the problem of climate change. The states determine how much pollution is to be allowed (the cap) and then auction it off in allotments to the highest bidders, who then either use the allotments themselves or re-sell them on the market (the trade.)
Or, in the case of the Adirondack Council, remove the allotments from circulation. It’s sort of like an atmospheric conservation easement: the right to pollute is purchased and then extinguished. Unlike a conservation easement, the allotment is only good for one year, meaning that it would need to be re-purchased every year to make it perpetual.
The Council’s breakthrough has been to bundle the financial contributions of many small donors into a large enough pot that the group can bid on (and win) allotments. The first RGGI auction was held in September, when the Council purchased and retired 1,000 tons of future carbon dioxide emissions. The program has been so successful that the Council is in the process of purchasing an additional 3,000 tons. For comparison, 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted from burning 100,000 gallons of gasoline or electrifying 150 houses for a year. Overall in the Northeast, 188 million tons will be auctioned off through RGGI in the coming year
The fact that such a relatively arcane program has been popular is an indication of how hungry people are for solutions to climate change. Though many people have made thoughtful choices about how to reduce their personal carbon emissions – driving less, switching from oil heat to wood heat, trading in the Suburban for a Prius – this has not overcome the reality that, as a society, we continue to do just the opposite. Because the RGGI cap is firm, however, retiring future emissions reduces everyone’s emissions, not just your own.
The cap-and-trade system also addresses the problem in a way that other methods, such as carbon sequestration (very popular in forestry circles) does not. An estimated 25% of the excess carbon currently in the atmosphere has come from deforestation, with 75% from fossil fuels. (The percentage continues to inexorably shift toward fossil fuels.) All the sequestration in the world, therefore, will do nothing to address the majority of the problem, which is our continued burning of fossil fuels.
The RGGI cap-and-trade system is said to be the model that president-elect Obama favors for tackling global warming on the Federal level. If so, programs like the Adirondack Council’s may soon spring up across the country. With the holidays approaching and with coal being nothing more than compressed carbon dioxide from an earlier age, the idea of giving someone the old metaphorical lump of coal may soon turn into the latest trend. All the cool people, so to speak, will be doing it.