CapGlobalCarbon is not an isolated idea. It evolved from a wide range of articles, books and websites of which this section provides an overview. We would welcome suggestions to expand this list.

The problem

The Atmosphere Business by Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization. This publication gives a good overview of everything that is wrong with the underlying ideologies and assumptions of carbon markets, and bring to light many of the contradictions and antagonisms that are currently at the heart of ‘climate capitalism’.

IPCC: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (PDF). “Climate-change impacts are expected to exacerbate poverty in most developing countries and create new poverty pockets in countries with increasing inequality, in both developed and developing countries.” – “Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems , disruption of food production and water supply , damage to infrastructure and settlements, morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being. For countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors.”

Governing Climate Change by Bulkeley and Newell. “Can a fragmented and often highly conflictual political system made up of over 170 sovereign states and numerous other actors achieve the high (and historically unprecedented) levels of cooperation and policy coordination needed to manage environmental problems on a global scale?”

Framespotting: Changing how you look at things changes how you see them. This short and crystal-clear book by long-time Feasta members Laurence and Alison Matthews explores the way in which climate change is currently framed and explains how stepping outside this frame could radically improve the outlook for finding solutions. The January 12 2015 entry on their blog describes the mechanics behind CapGlobalCarbon in plain language.

Framing the climate talks, also by Laurence and Alison Matthews. From the September/October edition of Resurgence magazine. This article provides a brilliant overview of the ‘mainstream’ framing of climate change and how this needs to be changed: “Global emergencies require global action: after all, its global warming, not international warming”.

Framing the Paris climate change summit by Caroline Whyte. This article argues that even environmental activists tend to use unhelpful framing when describing climate change, and goes on to suggest alternate framing. For example, climate change action is often described as “costly” – but costly for whom? What if climate change action could actually help the financially vulnerable?

Carbon capping schemes

Cap and Share This website provides a clear overview of Cap and Share, the mechanism behind CapGlobalCarbon. Below is an embed of a video about Cap and Share giving a succinct explanation of how it works.

Sharing for Survival: Restoring the climate, the commons and society This book, which can be read online for free, examines in detail the implications of adopting a CapGlobalCarbon scheme. The book includes Operating effectively at the world level by John Jopling in which the author describes a number of systemic reasons why current global governance is dysfunctional. The solution is for global citizens to build a new kind of system that is just, equitable and effective. Also in the book is Caroline Whyte’s chapter on managing the share of revenue from emissions permits sales on a global level.

Why leaving fossil fuels in the ground is good for everyone by George Monbiot on 7 January 2015: “companies would buy permits to extract fossil fuels in a global auction. As a global cap on the amount of fossil fuel that could be burnt came into force, the price would rise, making low carbon technologies, such as wind, solar and nuclear, much better investments. The energy corporations would then have no choice but to start getting out of dirt and into clean technologies.”

For Paris 2015: A Climate Trust Not a Treaty by Mike Sandler in The Huffington Post: “The international negotiations, with their uncoordinated and unenforceable pledges, may go nowhere, but if a couple of countries decide to support the “one person, one share” methodology, a few tens of millions of dollars are raised, and a global citizen’s movement for a Global Climate Trust arise over the next five years, then there would be reason to have hope again for a climate change solution at the international level.”

Dividends for America is a diverse, non-partisan coalition of organizations and individuals advocating for the return of carbon price revenues back to people as a “dividend.”

Carbon Capping: A Citizen’s Guide by Peter Barnes. A 22 page booklet on Carbon Capping with a foreword by Bill McKibben.  “In theory, a descending economy-wide carbon cap is the best way, if not the only way, to guarantee a pre-determined decrease in carbon emissions by a pre-determined date. That’s because it’s an absolute limit on emissions rather than just an incentive or regulation.”

Carbon Share by Mike Sandler. When carbon emissions are capped, Carbon Share returns the value of emissions permits back to households.

A Primer: How Does Cap and Dividend Work? by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network aims to implement Cap and Dividend in the United States. “By setting a steadily declining cap on the total amount of U.S. carbon pollution that can be released into the atmosphere, we will join efforts worldwide to reduce heat-trapping emissions in enough time to prevent catastrophic global warming impacts.”

CapGlobalCarbon in other media

CapGlobalCarbon – A global response to a global problem by John Jopling. In an article published by Scientists for Global Responsbility, John Jopling provides a succinct overview of Cap Global Carbon.

Working towards practical solutions to climate change by John Jopling in the Guardian: “One vital issue that has so far received only limited attention is the lack of a global-level regulator to make sure that in future the global aggregate of fossil-fuel emissions is drastically reduced each year, as dictated by climate science. Climate change is a global issue. It calls for worldwide regulation”

Making sure we’ll be safe: A global solution to avert disastrous climate change by Erik-Jan van Oosten on the Valhalla Movement platform:  “The proceeds from the auction are distributed to or for the benefit of people throughout the world in equal shares per capita. As about 80 percent of the world population today uses a less than average portion of fossil energy most people would gain financially.”

The Pope Calls for New Global Institution to Protect the Commons, Tackle Climate and Poverty by Mike Sandler in the Huffington Post: members of the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability in Ireland and the UK came up with similar approach called Cap & Share. Most recently under the banner CapGlobalCarbon, they are seeking partners to become affiliates in a citizen’s initiative to create a Global Climate Trust, and are planning to make an appearance at the UN Climate Conference in Paris this December. Unfortunately, the major players at the UNFCCC have abandoned the “top-down” strategy in the aftermath of the failed 2009 Copenhagen conference. Instead, countries are volunteering “bottom-up contributions”, which presumably will later be strengthened. As the Pope implies with the urgency of his tone, it is likely that these contributions will fall short on emissions reduction as well as on poverty alleviation and equity.”

Can the law save us from climate change? by Erik-Jan van Oosten on the Resilience.org platform “There is one easy step that governments could take to make them immune to court cases like this: take part in the CapGlobalCarbon scheme. This would automatically ensure that only fossil fuels from within the carbon budget will be allowed to be extracted or imported. There is an alternative to the current, overly complicated, system of managing emissions. Hiding behind the “reducing carbon effectively and equitably is terribly complex” argument is not an option anymore.”

The global scale

Gaia, a new look at life on earth (PDF, 171 pages) by James Lovelock. “We need to love and respect the earth with the same intensity that we give to our families and our tribe. It is not a matter of them and us or some adversarial affair with lawyers involved; our contract with the Earth is fundamental, for we are a part of it and cannot survive without a healthy planet as our home.”

A Memory of Solferino by Henry Dunant. “This is the book that prompted the creation of what is now a worldwide movement with millions of members and made the name of Henry Dunant known everywhere: The Red Cross. The account has moved many people and still does today. “One finishes this book cursing war”, wrote the Goncourt brothers in the nineteenth century. Dunant developed the idea that in the future a neutral organization should exist to provide care to wounded soldiers.” CapGlobalCarbon can be seen as an effort to expand on that: providing care to wounded Gaia.

CapGlobalCarbon: A Gaian Response by John Jopling. “We can also see Humanity’s role in responding to climate change in a new light. Because the human species is part of life on Earth we are part of, or at least we are capable of being part of, the Earth’s self-regulating system. In taking action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels we are acting as part of Gaia’s self-regulating system. We are playing a Gaian role. This is Gaia’s response to a Gaian need.”

Austerity and degrowth – dealing with the economic crisis and the ecological crisis together by Brian Davey. In this update to his book Credo, Brian Davey argues that Cap and Share/CapGlobalCarbon could play an important role in the transition to an ‘economics of safety’: “…a policy like cap and share would ensure that the contraction in material production happens in the areas that it needs to contract – that part of production that caters for the lifestyle of the rich. Because the poor might even gain we can expect that their consumption might rise to some degree initially. “

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