An individual carbon dioxide limit should be applied to every person in order to establish a “planetary guardrail” in the effort to combat allegedly man-made climate change, a leading German scientist has argued.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said this week that every person should have a limit of three tonnes of C02 emissions per year and those who exceed their limit should be forced to pay for the pleasure.
In comments reported by Taagesschau, Schellnhuber said that there were are two competing property rights issues at hand, namely the right to spend one’s money on high emissions activities and the rights of the rest of the population to “have an environment worth living [in]”.
In a carbon credit style scheme, those who emit over the three-tonne limit by the middle of the century would need to privately purchase credits from those who are under the limit, he suggested: “Every person gets three tons of CO2 per year, but if you need more, you just have to buy it.”
At present, according to the news outlet, the average German is far above Schellnhuber’s proposed limit, as ten tonnes of C02 emissions are produced by the average citizen. Citing the Paris World Inequality lab, there are some millionaires within the country that produce over 100 tonnes of CO2 per year, and some thousands of elites worldwide emit over 2,000 tonnes per year.
Aside from not spelling out how he expects people to drastically reduce their carbon emissions, the German scientist did not elaborate on how exactly this will be tracked and monitored.
However, at last year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Alibaba Group President J. Michael Evans said that the Chinese tech giant is currently developing a digital “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor the emissions of the public.
“We are developing through technology the ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint… where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform,” the former Goldman Sachs banker explained.
Ironically, given that the annual meeting — which will convene again next week — sees thousands of private jets descend upon the Swiss ski retreat, Evans went on to say that the tracker would ensure that people are “incentivised to do the right thing even if they were provided the opportunity to do the wrong thing.”
Following the release of a report this week on the future of the British Conservative (Tory) government’s net zero agenda, which called for the banning of new gas boiler sales within ten years, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said that the green movement will only serve to make the citizens of the West poorer while enriching the likes of Communist China
“We are engaged in an act of self harm,” the Brexiteer said. “It will not bring us economic benefits, it will make everybody a whole lot poorer and yet the lemmings in Parliament are all taking us toward the economic cliff.”
“I can’t think of an issue in which the public and the politicians are now more divided.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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