Alternative proposals to Cap and Share

More detailed information may be found on the Cap and Share Resources Wiki.

Contraction and Convergence
Cap and Share (C&S) evolved from the Contraction and Convergence (C&C) proposal developed by the Global Commons Institute. The main differences are (1) C&C leaves the share out of permits to governments while C&S gives them to individuals (2) C&C has a convergence period during which the rich countries get more permits per head than the poorer ones while C&S proposes that everyone should get the same allocation immediately (3) In Cap and Share there is an International Transition Fund for special difficulties that particular countries might face could be covered through selling a small percentage of permits at an international level (4) Cap and Share also encourages local "Community Transition Funds" where perhaps 10% of permits are sold for community level projects through participatory budgeting (5) Cap and Share proposes that independent national "Climate Protection Trusts" should be set up to administer the scheme, while C&C leaves this to governments.

However, it has been proposed by some supporters of C&C that the convergence date should be 2013 which is more or less immediate, and the other features of C&S can easily be incorporated into C&C.

Carbon taxes
Targeted carbon taxes can be useful within countries to fine-tune but they do not provide an overall framework. If carbon taxes are used to reduce the use of fossil fuels, the level of tax that was effective in a boom would be grossly excessive in a recession. This would make the tax rate a political football. Carbon taxes cannot guarantee to cap emissions at a definite level and there is unlikely to be any international agreement on the level at which taxes should be set. Even the EU failed to introduce a carbon tax covering just 15 countries.

Personal Carbon Allowances
Another proposal is to distribute Personal Carbon Allowances to people who would surrender them when buying fossil fuel. If someone did not need all their allocation, they would be able to sell the surplus. PCAs have the educational advantage that when, say, filling your car, you would see your allocation reduce. They would, however, require everyone to have a carbon account with a central authority. They are thus costly, complex and possibly intrusive to introduce. Further, they are only a national solution and do not scale up into an international one.

Cap and Trade (C&T)
The only existing C&T system is the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). However, companies, finance houses and governments are considering a post 2012 Kyoto system with linked C&T systems all over the world. C&T systems have so far given the ownership of emissions permits to private companies and governments. Some of the drawbacks include: no automatic compensation from rising carbon prices to either guard individuals against fuel poverty or reward people on low carbon; ability to only cover larger installations without very high transaction costs; distortion of competition, for instance against low carbon companies or certain transport sectors; windfall profits costing the pubic more; open to corruption; setting nation against nation in agreeing targets; may lead to countries not cutting emissions but simply importing credits from dubious schemes elsewhere; it may encourage fossil fuel plants to be kept open or commissioned. Attempts are being made to reform the EU ETS but these may not be able to overcome basic flaws in its design as an overall system. See the Resources Wiki for more information.

Auctioning permits
Some organisations suggest that governments should auction emission permits to fossil fuel importers and producers. This could be similar to the cap half of the Cap and Share proposal and it could ensure that emissions were kept to an acceptable level. It would, however, be essentially a form of taxation and the question of how big a share of the world’s emissions capacity each country should have would still have to be settled. Agreeing that could take years unless a simple per capita scheme was adopted. Further, without C&S or "cap and rebate" arrangements, such schemes would not involve individuals in a rightful mutual ownership of the "sky commons".

The EU Emissions Trading Scheme and some US States are considering this option for their existing or proposed "cap and trade" systems.