Strategy

This should be updated ... originally written 2022. Also check the manifesto.

Mission and Vision

Our vision is for a movement that shows how everybody can have the knowledge and means to control their own CO2 emissions in a meaningful, significant way. We want to demonstrate how individual action on climate change can contribute to fighting climate change on a personal, local, national and global level.

Our mission is to promote local action by groups of individuals, using real data, and supporting the concepts of fair carbon allowances, carbon labelling and advocacy for the controlled reduction of fossil fuel production via a carbon allowance-based currency. We plan to build a movement and replace public reference to "carbon taxes" with "carbon allowances".

Summary

Climate change presents a deep-rooted, extensive and multi-faceted challenge to today's globalised, free market economy. The one key point that must be recognised by those who drive the economy on is that the climate science is clear: any attempt to get through this crisis without halting the increase of atmospheric CO2 could destroy today's society. The root of the problem is that most people are not aware of how much CO2 they create, and are even less aware of what the costs of those emissions are. This affects not just citizens but business, public services, governments and even international institutions, it stymies all attempts to tackle the climate crisis and plays into the hands of those who want to see the energy transition fail. Citizens blame governments and business, while businesses point to the demands of their customers and the costs they must bear, and governments cite the short term priorities of voters and lobbyists. Meanwhile the risks to the planet grow ever greater and the cynical await the first major calamity which will spur the world into action.

EcoCore proposes a different approach in which carbon allowances are given on an equal per capita basis to citizens, to create a carbon currency which business must use to give or take in payment for all the carbon in their supply chains, in a step-wise fashion reaching ultimately back to the fossil fuel producers who supply carbon into the economy. The use of this currency in tokens for every transaction in the economy would make the actual CO2 emissions of every saleable item or service directly visible on the item's price tag next to the cash price. The trading of carbon tokens by people with excess or companies needing more would result in a tangible carbon price, broadly accepted across nations implementing the carbon currency, reflecting collective efforts to decarbonise their economies.

Background and Organisational Structure

EcoCore was founded in 2021 in the UK to promote sustainability with a focus on the climate crisis, amongst citizens, businesses and government. EcoCore works in principle in conjunction with the charity EcoCounts to widen geographically and thematically the local, citizen-focused aims of the charity, so therefore there are 2 separate legal entities - a CIO (charitable incorporated organisation, i.e. has charitable status) and a CIC (community interest company), which will carry out all the non-charitable business.

EcoCounts' main objective is to build a local group of activists who watch their carbon footprint and sustainability, with a long term aim to create a personal carbon trading group, a carbon footprint and carbon account app, and good recognition amongst local businesses and government, and to create a blueprint which can be adopted in other locations.

EcoCore intends to spread the movement far and wide, to promote academic and political acceptance of the carbon allowances and currency approach, while running communications and fundraising campaigns.

Market Analysis

What is the market for our approach to the crises of the 21st Century? How do we promote the socio-economic concept of sustaining over exploiting?

Our answer is formulated from a range of inputs drawn from the psychology of human behaviour, the theory of campaigning, a heterodox economics of climate change, markets and capitalism, and the science of climate modelling and forecasting. This wrap-around concept lends EcoCore a unique value proposition, but for EcoCore to win financial support from under the noses of well-established organisations still requires a better & more complete understanding of public beliefs than theirs, and how to frame this new narrative in a way that inspires people to give their time as participants, their money as donors and their support when influential. We are advocating a new paradigm.

The essential tool on which EcoCore builds its approach is an intervention in our economy - personal carbon allowances - that meets the demands of many and with the carbon currency, seems daunting different. We must convince many that such systemic change is feasible, effective, fair and beneficial. To create the paradigm shift in the public mind, it is essential to create a compelling narrative. EcoCore must combine insights into the functioning of carbon allowances as a carbon currency, with illustrations of its merits, against a backdrop of the dangers society faces from climate change. EcoCore's vision has many merits on different levels, some which affect individuals, some impact business, others apply to government and even nation states and global organisations. Not only can individuals be inspired by the potential of EcoCore's offering, but businesses and governments must be approached for financial support with proposals that apply at those levels.

To individuals, the EcoCore narrative will be most compelling to those who both want a fair solution, have an understanding of how the modern economy functions, and are clear about the risks of the more catastrophic scientific prognoses. This rules out many on the political left who have an instinctive dislike of market-based mechanisms, and those on the right who have a misinformed distrust of catastrophic scientific warnings. We refer here to donors and supporters, rather than participants in the EcoCounts group.

To businesses, the EcoCore concept offers a future with clarity and purpose where they can play a strong part in ushering in the energy transition, by managing their own carbon budgets, controlling their own CO2 emissions, and publicising their efforts without danger of greenwash accusations. It compares well against the current carbon markets and industry trade bodies that attempt to provide some sort of business solution. It offers a framework for self-management against the current actual or threatened regulatory burden and confusion concerning carbon accounting and emissions responsibility. EcoCore or EcoCounts can offer a sponsorship package where the branding displays a company's commitment to a climate-secure future based either on EcoCore's proposals or locally with EcoCounts, on more direct involvement with the group and its activities, e.g. through carbon labelling.

Governments, especially of small nations looking for radical change, should appreciate a carbon currency system that reveals a citizen-oriented, market-based carbon price. Such an instrument would have utility for any party seeking to make hard deals in climate negotiations. To approach such governments would require inspired networking, or even simply a direct approach via London embassies. The specific funding requests could cover high level advocacy, ongoing academic research into economic assumptions underlying the concept, and professional analysis and publication of the expected benefits to such small nations.

Grant-giving bodies may be convinced and provide funding especially for academic collaborations with the EcoCounts carbon footprinting efforts, and modelling of the carbon currency monetary system. The challenge with grants though is that the usual limited application process may not allow effective communication of the whole reasoning behind our approach, or of the full scope of impacts.

Resources & References

Why the energy transition must be from the bottom up: https://climateoutreach.org/trust-petersberg-climate-dialogue/

Competitive Analysis for Funding

1. Primary competitors: grassroots organisations having local groups and most have lobbying activities
   • Positive Money https://positivemoney.org/local-groups/ focuses on govt & central bank policy, grassroots groups are discussion & debate
   • Transition Streets https://www.transitionstreets.org.uk/about focuses on personal action, reducing cost of living & carbon footprint
   • Citizens Climate Lobby https://citizensclimatelobby.org/about-ccl/methodology/ lobbying work by large numbers of participants
   • Friends of the Earth https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/near-you/local-authority/islington?postcode=n43ld#community campaigning local authority level
   • Greenpeace https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/volunteering/join-a-local-volunteer-group/ campaigning street level
2. Competitive products/services
   • A thousand websites with top ten tips on going green & saving the planet, from nano-actions to instructions for a complete activist lifestyle
   • Take the Jump https://hub.takethejump.org email-based campaign with online hub and support groups
   • Transition Streets package https://www.transitionstreets.org.uk/about set up a similar group but just to be green, no carbon allowances in sight
   • Climate App https://www.theclimateapp.earth/ One of dozens of apps out there to teach & prompt you to climate action
   • Carbon Buddy manual https://www.carbonbuddyproject.org/ buy the book for £10 - competes with Hitchhiker's Guide to Climate Change concept
3. Risks and opportunities in competitive market
   • Failure to identify most engaged audience
   • Failure to build audience generally
   • Not enough time & resources to exploit opportunities
   • Catalogue of benefits in total difficult to communicate, each benefit on its own not strong enough
   • Radical nature of approach requires paradigm shift for many donors
   • Extreme existential risks for civilisation justify radical approach but difficult to communicate
   • Complexity and unfamiliarity daunting for average citizens
   • Several potential funding channels, in total require high effort
   • Much funding available is not for marketing, growth, core funding
   • Don't have high profile sponsor or patron
   • EcoCore is the only organisation campaigning on this (risks lack of credibility, but potentially lots of frustrated support out there waiting for this)
   • Plenty of opportunities for collaboration & synergy with other organisations
   • Climate change is getting continually worse so narrative should become slowly more convincing (it already is since 2018, in my opinion)
   • Opportunity for publicity through uniqueness and novelty if we can generate numbers for people and impact
   • Concept is broad and all-encompassing, can find stories anywhere (mirror image of risk of doing too much)
4. Recent or emerging changes in the industry
   • extreme weather, floods, droughts, wildfires causing tangible, obvious dangers, widely reported in the media and blamed on climate change, which concerns people
   • general belief that nothing can be done in policy to control demand is beginning to change
   • calls for "radical" and "systemic" change are becoming more frequent, forceful and persuasive (Attenborough, UN chief)
   • More and more disinformation, denial, populism, e.g. on Twitter under Musk
   • Understanding of public attitudes and marketing approaches increasing e.g. Britain Talks Climate https://climateoutreach.org/britain-talks-climate/
   • Ambition for the voluntary carbon markets, technological solutions like CCS and free markets in general starting to diminish. Acceptance of need for strong policy growing
   • Extreme polarisation in Britain under Truss, with faith in deconstruction of government, vs Monbiot label of neo-liberal ultras - continuation of Trump populism, also seen in EU states
   • On the other hand, some polarising issues are beginning to be discussed with less extremism e.g. nuclear in Germany
5. Specific description of competitive advantage and value of proposed product or service
   • the EcoCounts concept is unique in that there is no other known local group anywhere in the UK measuring their own carbon footprint and aiming to adopt personal carbon trading
   • the EcoCore strategy should appeal broadly with the narrative of its overall approach:
     • to citizens with concern for personal and govt action
     • to business people with desire for clarity, transparency and predictability i.e. carbon tokens are real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified, harmless, unique and fungible
     • to political, national and international climate negotiators needing an objective framework
   • an extensive catalogue of diverse benefits
   • equitable, both within countries and internationally
   • freedom of choice instead of prescriptive nanny state, both for citizens and for business (except the fossil fuel industry)
   • economy-wide carbon labelling & accounting completed for each product or service by the vendor
   • strong carbon price signal, market-based carbon price discovery
   • strong lever of control over fossil fuel production
   • one policy covers many sectors with all-encompassing economic mechanism
   • robust, transparent and universally applicable mechanism for emissions trading schemes and carbon offset projects
   • single point of governance
   • cross-region & border compatibility
   • inclusive of CH4, NOx, CFCs & other non-carbon GHGs
   • business-oriented, offering an approach to accelerate commercial adaptation to the energy transition, in contrast to many proposals & policies which view business as the problem
   • supply-side control method within a whole package of benefits - not limiting, draconian rationing or nationalisation

Operations

1. Management structure: board of directors (need more directors), volunteers team manager
2. Staffing plan and key personnel: volunteer staff (copywriting, IT, video, social media, fundraising), moving to permanent & salaried when critical & funded
3. The prospect of combating climate change via carbon allowances as a carbon currency is a new, under-researched and challenging concept. Therefore the campaign has multiple lines of attack, both for fundraising, and for raising awareness and outreach, which in turn boosts fundraising.
   • EcoCounts - grassroots group involvement in carbon footprint reduction and personal carbon trading
   • Public communications - how citizens need to be at the heart of decision-making, building their trust to accelerate socio-economic change
   • Academic - discussion and research into carbon footprints, PCT, carbon allowances and currency concept
   • Business - business and industry outreach on carbon labelling, carbon accounting, carbon currency
   • Political - parties and movements interest
   • Global - climate NGOs and national climate negotiators involvement

Budget 2023

Company	Task	Days	Day Cost	Other Cost	Total
EcoCounts	Emissions spreadsheet - database input, accounts, consolidation	22	5500
EcoCounts	Outreach and participant recruitment	58	14500
EcoCounts	Psychology programme from Chimp Management	53	13250	10000
EcoCounts	Group communications & team-building programme	3	750
EcoCounts	Incentives programme	6	1500	1500
EcoCounts	Blueprint for creating new groups and scaling	6	1500
EcoCore	App and database to replace EcoCounts spreadie	25	6250
Politics	Political party and grassroots movements outreach	10	2500
EcoCore	Social media & SEO outreach, donations & crowdfunding campaign	156	39000	5000
Business	Business sponsorship search	18	4500	1125
EcoCounts	Grant-giving fundraising drive	18	4500	1125
Academic	Carbon currency and PCT academic outreach, research programme	113	28250
Global	networking & outreach at international climate negotiation level	18	4500
EcoCore	Overall strategy development (campaign strategy, theory of change)	23	5750	5000
EcoCore	Admin, maintenance & governance	24	6000
Total		543	138,250	23,750	162,000

Evaluation and Assessment

• Quantifiable financial goals as per budget, £162K required
• Quantifiable mission goals:
  • completion of carbon footprint spreadsheet with accurate dataset
  • EcoCounts group membership numbers +/- 50 people
  • effective group psychology programme for commitment, motivation & team bonding
  • contact and reaction with political parties, movements & NGOs
  • digital outreach via newsletters, search engines and social media
  • contact with business and industry via trade shows, presentations, business press coverage with commerce-oriented narrative(s)
  • grant applications programme with significant number of applications, or targeted % of total raised
  • creation of academic collaboration on personal emissions reduction & PCT
  • creation of economic modelling & simulations for carbon currency monetary systems
  • contact and reaction with climate negotiators - see NationStates
• Monitoring and evaluation strategy - recruit for EcoCore board of directors & provide monthly / quarterly presentations

Financial Plan and Projections

Revenue and expenses with key assumptions.

• Start up costs: laptops for 3 staff
• Capital requirements: 1 year salary for 3 staff
• Grants, public subscriptions, business sponsorship, one-off fundraisers/crowdfunding
• Pro forma balance sheet for start up???
• Cash flow summary or projection???
• Assumptions???

Framed in Terms of Carbon Accounting

The Landscape

1. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases and environmental degradation have unbalanced the atmospheric carbon cycle and are causing accelerating climate change. Society urgently needs to find a way to reverse this process to avoid the extensive threats to our standard of living and the significant risks to our future civilisation.
2. Carbon accounting is a process used to identify where and in what quantity CO2 or CO2 equivalent gases are produced or removed from the atmosphere. This is a necessary first step in climate change mitigation.
3. Interest in carbon accounting is growing because:
   • the state in many countries is increasing the coverage of emissions trading schemes which places a direct cost on CO2 emissions based on audited disclosures
   • investors demand disclosure as states threaten to introduce and increase taxes, penalties and bans on CO2 emissions, which could cause their investments or potential investments to decline in value
   • consumer preference for low emissions greener products and services is growing
   • negative emissions are increasingly enabling income generation
4. Currently, different carbon accounting methodologies exist, some small scale and local involving personal carbon footprint tracking, some mid-scale where best practice defines scopes 1, 2 & 3 of corporate responsibility, and some international in terms of cumulative national emissions. Most methods are highly debated and only a limited number at any level are actually agreed by all participants.
   • One example of debate around CO2 emissions results from some parties arguing that their responsibility for emissions does not extend to that emitted during the production of the goods and services they consume. Others see these emissions as cumulative, which must all be recorded to demonstrate the total impact of a goods or service by the final consumer. With CO2 removal, it is for instance difficult to prevent double-counting: some states will claim the removals that have already generated income for private business.
5. Carbon emissions accounting is undertaken most stringently by commercial operations where significant quantities of CO2 emissions or removal are concerned. Most will engage a third party auditor to verify the emissions data. The lower the quantity of emissions produced, the less stringent and the more based on self-reporting the accounting tends to be. Here are the chief categories with some examples:
   • industrial manufacturers with large energy use subject to state regulatory emissions trading schemes, e.g. participants in CARB C&T, RGGI, EU ETS, based on regulatory methodologies
   • voluntary carbon market exchanges, e.g. Verra, Gold Standard, who create methodologies for carbon emissions reduction accounting and verification to allow commodification of CO2 emissions avoidance and atmospheric removal. Many large and small players.
   • corporations with strong ESG policies operating in the voluntary carbon markets, e.g. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, to offset CO2 emissions with carbon credits, basing disclosure on audit methodologies from non-government standards bodies, e.g. SBTi
   • NGO, government & supra-national bodies run carbon accounting analyses on national level CO2 emissions and removals, particularly for climate negotiations, national carbon trading, development aid.
   • direct air capture, carbon capture, CO2 removal technology and implementation by companies concentrating on collection and often sequestration of CO2 as a service, e.g. Carbon Plan (Stripe, Climeworks, Shopify)
   • The customers are the organisations that either pay for their emissions or are rewarded for CO2 removals.
6. Other stakeholders are
   • governments that impose CO2 emissions regulatory control
   • carbon market exchanges which create accounting methodologies for CO2 removals
   • standards bodies which create accounting methodologies for CO2 emissions
   • scientific research institutes which advance the understanding and coverage of both emissions and removals, e.g. in natural environments (marine, soils, forests), in non-CO2 greenhouse gases
   • third party technical capacities which continually evolve and improve e.g. remote sensing of forest cover or methane emissions, isotope analysis of carbon-14 content as evidence of emission origins
   • regional trading blocks that impose tariffs and carbon border adjustment mechanisms

EcoCore Carbon Accounting Concept

Current carbon accounting practice has some major issues.

• Firstly for approximately 80% of the economy, carbon accounting is carried out in the absence of binding regulation. Some 10% is covered by emissions trading schemes and another 10% by various other forms of carbon tax. Only organisations that invest heavily in their public image are actually under pressure to engage, and many of these are selling off their high emissions businesses to smaller private operations that have no pressure to demonstrate their decarbonisation plans. This free rider problem inhibits growth and development of the whole sector.
• A second problem in carbon accounting is that the definition of responsibility in terms of scopes 1, 2 and 3 encompasses under scope 3 a broad umbrella of indirect emissions over which the CO2-emitting organisation cannot realistically claim any significant control. This is significant because scope 3 emissions typically make up 80% of a company’s emissions. Due to the uniqueness of every organisation’s scope 3 emissions catalog, the task of standardising, verifying and certifying such emissions would be huge and the potential for legal dispute equally so.
• Also relevant, especially relevant due to the urgency demanded by climate change, is timeliness. Under current carbon accounting methodologies, an organisation in a supply chain runs an annual carbon audit - or even less frequent. Improvements in the carbon footprint and changes in the price are only passed on at the change in the next audit. Putting a brake on innovation and inventiveness by up to a year seriously impacts the whole energy transition.
• To produce carbon credits, a range of factors must be met, including measurability, permanence, non-additionality, verifiability, harmlessness and uniqueness. There are huge amounts of carbon credits on the market which are very low quality when measured by these standards. However due to the size of the market and the fact that many of buyers holding these credits can influence the standards bodies, there is a resulting inertia against improvements and development.
• These low quality carbon credits are still sold and command an appropriately low price. However the result is that the price of carbon credits does not solely reflect the amount of CO2 emissions offset and the perceived risk or benefit of having that offset. It also represents the quality, which dilutes the price signal.

EcoCore proposes a nationwide all-inclusive carbon accounting framework based on a regular equal per capita allowance of carbon tokens for individual citizens. This feeds carbon tokens into the economy via a carbon price on all goods and services, creating a dual currency monetary system. At the origin of control, fossil fuel producers would charge all customers not only in money, but also in carbon tokens at a price denominated in kilos of CO2. Every step of every supply chain between the fossil fuel industry and citizen consumer would involve dual transactions of tokens as well as money.

Because every product or service that a business purchases would then carry a carbon price that the vendor will demand payment for, the business knows its total carbon footprint from its spending. All scopes of GHG emissions are covered and no further auditing is necessary. E.g. at its simplest, in the purchase of fuel (GHG protocol scope 1), or the least direct (scope 3) in the engagement of services from a separate organisation which by necessity must charge carbon tokens appropriately as well as its fees, in order to pay cover its own carbon budget.

The carbon currency framework allows the impact of significant changes in CO2 emissions to ripple quickly through a supply chain as participants adjust their carbon prices in response on a real-time basis.

Combined with this inherent practicality for accounting, the clarity and visibility of the carbon price should excite imagination, innovation and entrepreneurship to accelerate the energy transition. Under every other scheme, the carbon price is incorporated into and often lost in the money price.

Can Carbon Accounting Succeed as a Private Venture?

In the absence of regulatory requirements to drive the energy transition across the economy, a voluntary carbon market has developed which enables business organisations to publish decarbonisation targets and to buy certified carbon offsets, which together serve to demonstrate the business’s commitment to net zero, boost their public image and satisfy their employees and stakeholders that they are serious about tackling climate change.

The stand-out problem faced by the voluntary carbon market is that it is not deemed effective enough in its short term impact on the decarbonisation of the economy and the reduction of CO2 emissions. The inertia in the economy and lack of progress in the carbon markets towards covering an effective percentage of business and industry is clearly leading to a near-term overshoot of the Paris Accord 1.5°C limit to global warming and increased risk of existential problems for society. Many citizens are alarmed by this prospect and their numbers include business leaders and policy makers as well. The question for the voluntary carbon market is what powerful structural change will emerge to drive the energy transition faster?

A primary facet of the current system of carbon accounting is that individual businesses are only responsible for the CO2 emissions under their control, in scopes 1 and 2 of the GHG Protocol. Scope 3 emissions by other operators in their supply chain only come into consideration under weaker rules denoted by “should be” and “where possible” clauses. The result is that businesses are not compelled to take great notice of those emissions beyond placing pressure on those other organisations, e.g. by threatening to replace the supplier in the supply chain. Under the EcoCore framework, every business would take the carbon tokens to pay into account when dealing with suppliers, as well as the money price of the goods and services offered to them in their supply chain. The decision would be business-critical, not just PR. Companies would have an obligation to balance their carbon budgets as well as their traditional finances. Any shortfall in carbon tokens would require purchasing them on the open market for cash.

Another issue is the free rider problem. Businesses operating in the same market as climate-concerned companies are free to take no action on their carbon budgets at all. They may suffer reputational damage, but that damage may not affect their bottom line. Why then would a business maximise emissions reduction efforts when it puts them at a disadvantage to their competitors? This problem is evidenced by the billion dollar climate disinformation industry which seeks to allay people’s and lawmakers’ fears about climate change, so manipulating the market into substantially undervaluing the cost of carbon to society and sparing the contributors to disinformation from the costs of emissions mitigation. Under the EcoCore framework, every company would be compelled to pay carbon tokens for CO2 emissions at any point in their supply chain. This levels the playing field.

It is clear that the extra set of accounts that is needed for carbon accounting would require back office staff for the operation, and considerable extra planning for business strategy. But the cost of this in comparison with the current costs of operating in the voluntary market and spending on carbon offsets are poorly researched.

The rules for operation of carbon drawdown and sequestration projects would change under the EcoCore framework because the government would become the buyer, paying for carbon dioxide removal in carbon tokens on a national basis. These carbon drawdown projects would enlarge the nation’s carbon budget, so therefore the government could pay them in appropriate amounts of carbon tokens, measured in kilos of CO2. This is a highly simplified explanation, but the end result is the profitability of carbon drawdown projects would be related to the price of carbon tokens and therefore related to the size of the national carbon budget and thus the urgency of the decarbonisation efforts. From the government perspective, the harder the desired effort, the smaller the carbon budget, the more expensive the carbon tokens, the more reward for CO2 removal.

Carbon Accounting is Likely More Effective If Citizens Are Included

The current system of carbon accounting regards each business organisation in effective isolation and attempts to quantify the CO2 emissions per organisation. This is of less use to climate-concerned consumers who are typically more interested in the actual emissions associated with any particular product that they buy rather than the impact of the whole company from whom they are buying. Often they will be unaware of which business they are buying from.

With current carbon accounting, a business would ideally identify and offset all their CO2 emissions, resulting in a product for sale that is completely carbon neutral. This however is far from the reality, and there is very little progress towards any form of carbon labelling where a company’s products display the CO2 emissions caused in their production.

The existence of carbon labels on products is the exception rather than the norm. Expecting consumers to show awareness of information that isn’t even presented to them is equivalent to hoping that a Weight Watcher will lose weight when they are unable to tell how many calories the food they choose contains.

With the EcoCore framework in place, citizens would educate themselves to become carbon literate and learn to manage their personal carbon allowance prudently. They would bring this knowledge into the workplace to the benefit of their employer, and vice versa. Hence citizens’ involvement in carbon accounting would complement business, so it can be expected to result in faster or more effective changes in the energy transition.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-tzu

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer, 1547 - 1616

We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
Greta Thunberg, Student Climate Striker, UN Summit, NY 2019 https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius

Privilege Statement

I acknowledge that we live in a social system that continues to create and perpetuate racism, sexism and other discrimination.

As a white man with English as a first language I recognise that this is not a trauma I have had to endure. That is my privilege.

I also recognise that I have a responsibility to educate myself and talk about racism with other white people, while also being open to feedback from people of colour when I make mistakes, which I will.

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Time to Upgrade the 2015 Paris Climate Accord

• the Paris Climate Accord is a fine concept but its effectiveness is dependent on the collective political will of the signatories to implement actual change. In reality now as the UN process drags on, its promise has turned into illusion as signatories either only find the political will to make vague insubstantial targets that they personally will never need to struggle with, or just walk away entirely.
• Paris Accord offers political promises with no teeth - like the UN Sustainable Development goals, there are no consequences for signatories who fail to achieve their own targets
• C&C offers contractual obligations

Why will a campaign take off?

• A new sense of urgency has appeared in a % of citizens, with school strikes, alliances of scientists, teachers, Extinction Rebellion, a synergy of awareness arising from other impending catastrophes such as the plastic oceans crisis, coral reef bleaching, Fukushima, the pesticide and agro-chemical crisis, the anti-biotic crisis, and the loss of rainforests, expansion of deserts, the critical danger of extinction of our megafauna, the draughts, the loss of glaciers
• Up to 6 out of 10 people are aware that we need to do something about our carbon emissions, but reality shows that this does not translate democratically into governments mandated to act - maybe due to facebook and the exploitation of social media algorithms or just plain bad politics.
• Up to 2 or 3 out of 10 people are core green and ready to make the required sacrifices.
• C&C+CPR is a framework whose adoption does not need to scare middle class home-owners or corporate chairmen, because it is a legal framework whose implementation at the beginning will be contractually impose only the carbon limits that we already live by
• It is essentially a mechanism, and how fast we turn the screw once the mechanism is in place will depend on the yearly conferences and the urgency and political will shown at those points in the future.

Alternative Futures

Without C&C and Total Carbon Rationing:

• Nordhaus and cost-benefit analysis relies on a discount rate - chosen politically - a high discount rate will show that it isn't worth keeping avg global temperature under 2, 3 or 4 or however many degrees C. A low discount rate would show it's worth doing everything possible (and so won't be chosen).
• The final output is influenced heavily according to the dollar net worth of citizens, which in usual parameter sets equates 15 Indians to 1 American - a dubious ethical approach.
• It uses flawed approaches to estimated the frequency of occurrence of various dollar-loss events, i.e. ignoring leptokurtic fat tails and Black Swans in favour of "normal" distributions (just like before financial meltdown of 2007/8
• capitalism goes nuclear - the free market response to tragedy of the commons
  • https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/reforms-in-funding-planned-to-meet-demand-for-nuclear-power-plants-j3n0mln0l
  • http://carbon-pulse.com/79239/ (Ohio State drops renewables for nuclear)
  • problems involve huge costs far into the future against the likelihood of much cheaper energy, environmental issues, waste disposal
• authoritarian imposition by national governments of round after round of carbon legislation - first of all the parliaments must agree politically to take every step along the way (as with Brexit!) and secondly, any legislation must be effectively implemented (think: loopholes, lobbyists, special interests and corruption)
• ultimately environmental, social and economic degradation substantially raises the risks of the establishment of an Orwellian or Huxleyesque dystopia.
• if we follow the path of highest risk, as someone eloquently and dramatically phrased it, we will be committing genocide (of the world's poor) followed by suicide.

What thorny problems will it solve

• avoids inefficient lurching between left and right governments with aiming for taxing carbon usage on the left and promoting nuclear and electric fleets on the right
• truly show whether nuclear energy is carbon-neutral thro rations for facilities, waste storage etc
• payments-to-source mechanism places all carbon usage under rationing - no leaks, loop holes, special interests etc
• the military - along with all other government services -must cover their carbon requirements with rations
• ordinary people "own the problem" and seek out low carbon alternatives

Issues

• Currency issues:
  • what happens when millions of Americans, Europeans and Japanese start buying carbon rations from poor Asians, Africans and Latin Americans? Will it harm exports from developing nations?
  • does the global US$ money supply represent an opportunity for US citizens to take unfair advantage in international trade of carbon rations?
• Stockpiling: if people start to stockpile rations as some kind of investment, what effects would that have? Could it be banned technically in the rations banking system?
• How will you sell a second-hand car? Imagine you bought a BMW for £25K and 50 rations, and now you want to sell it. How do you decide how many carbon rations it is worth? The market price would fluctuate, but you would start at the fraction of the lifetime the car has left.
• Describe transition for farmer with second job in city 50 miles away.

Who didn't see something big coming

• General Custer
• Captain of the Titanic
• Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler

UK Current Decarbonisation Achievements

• Over the last couple of decades, Britain has reduced its energy consumption, increased efficiency, cut carbon intensity (coal is almost out of the mix). Can our politicians truthfully take credit?
• Our heavy industry is gone, our GDP is held up by service industries
• We import most manufactured goods, i.e. their built-in emissions are emitted in China
• Technological advancements in renewables and efficiency measures
• We have used the European Emissions Trading System for emissions and adapted it with the Carbon Price Support mechanism but the UK gov has frozen this at 2013 levels and abandoned the original aims. Research shows the mechanism has made coal unprofitable and current policy would allow coal to come back

Means

• Technically
  • Banking platform / Monzo / Revolut / Stripe.com : provide gaming, virtualisation, role-playing platform to show effects of rationing
  • Mark Carney / BOE
  • VAT / Tax / Accountant
• Financially
  • Central banks
  • EU
  • IMF
  • OECD
  • Norway Investment fund
  • Divest campaign
  • Economists
• Grassroots organisation internationally
  • US / Canada
  • Japan
  • UK
  • EU / DACH / Spain-Portugal / Italy / Poland-Czech-Hungary-Croatia
  • Brazil
  • Spanish Latin America
  • Australasia
  • Youth Climate Strikers - Greta Thunberg, Anna Taylor
  • Prince Charles
  • 10:10
  • James Hansen 350.org
• Corporate buy-in from fossil fuel producers
  • BP SPENCER.DALE@uk.bp.com, DudleyRW@bp.com
  • BHP
  • Shell
• Political endorsement in party manifestos
  • Tony Blair
  • UK - Tory/Labour/Greens/LibDems
  • US Republican / Democrat
  • German CSU/SPD/Gruenen
• Negative carbon rations
  • Saudi / Arab / someone with lots of desert
  • Brazil / Gabon / Malaysia / people with lots of rainforest
• United Nations
  • UNFCCC
• Academia
  • Aubrey Mayer, Tina Fawcett, Meyer Hillman

Science Links

Climeworks: https://qz.com/1683044/you-can-now-pay-climeworks-to-turn-your-carbon-emissions-to-stone/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/learning/teach-about-climate-change-with-these-24-new-york-times-graphs.html

Deforestation: Tropical tree losses persist at high levels https://blog.globalforestwatch.org/data-and-research/technical-blog-global-forest-watchs-2018-data-update-explained

http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions

https://skepticalscience.com/Comparing-IPCC-projections-to-observations.html

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-worlds-carbon-emissions-in-one-chart

https://climatefeedback.org/

https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

Tina Fawcett's PCT

Mobile Info, Organisation and Decision Making Platform

• Whatsapp-like communication channels - fast, accessible off-line, can load in background
• Decision-making voting tools
• Wiki-like editable pages or file-reading-sharing-editing
• Task management like trello
• Landing page with plug-ins for tweets, instagram, fb & more
• Fast save from channel to file / task / gallery
• Email or phone ID
• Calendar

Getting the message across

Title	Desc
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook
Blog
Linked-in
Website free page / graphics etc / Wordpress?
Press releases
Invitation Op-Eds
Youtube
What if... politically impossible to do anything, already too late, a government gets in and cancels it?
Fantastic examples
Technical overview of international carbon economy with C&C+CPR
Political climate: it bridges the growing polarisation between left and right
Proposal Front Page	1
Detailed Proposal	2
C&C+CPR Graphics	3
Advantages of C&C+CPR Adoption	1
Climate Science Risk Summary	5
Structure, Budget, People	1
198 Methods of Non-violent Action	https://www.aeinstein.org/nonviolentaction/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

Whether To Ignore Climate Forecasts Showing a Dire Future

Temperatures have already risen about one degree Celsius since pre-industrial times. Scientists warn further increases risk triggering tipping points that could render swathes of the globe uninhabitable, devastate farming and drown coastal cities.

Dire predictions for BAU scenario beyond 2040

Trump stops scientific forecasting beyond 2040

Humans are No Good at Coping with Climate Change Risk

Humans can experience risk on a visceral level only if it is:

• visible
• having historical precedence
• immediate
• with direct personal impact
• simple causality
• caused by an enemy

Climate change risk has none of these properties, compared to for example, a lion in savanna which:

• is visible (there it is!)
• has historical precendence (it ate your brother last week!)
• immediate (there is the lion - act now or be killed!)
• direct impact (the lion is going to eat you!)
• simple causality (the lion is going to eat you and you are going to be dead!)
• caused by an enemy (the lion!)

Bearing this in mind, it is clear that the killer is not the problem - for instance, Climate change made Europe’s mega-heatwave five times more likely but it was the heat that killed - the extra link in the chain is the problem. Like a terrorist who is the killer when the real problem is the terrorist recruiter.

The human brain can grasp more conceptual problems only after long, repeated exposure.

Carbon Currency Research Topics

1. Estimation of the maximum sustainable rate of CO2 emissions reduction for an economy under the carbon currency, also compared to carbon taxation
2. The elasticity of fossil fuel demand under different carbon policies
3. Impact under future scenarios on oil companies: business-as-usual, carbon taxation, carbon currency, direct rationing
4. If the net worth of an oil concern is dependant on its total exploitable reserves, would the carbon currency cause a financial meltdown?
5. The bureaucratic cost of the carbon currency compared to other carbon taxation, carbon taxation with dividends, and regulation
6. Is the carbon price of goods and services revealed by the carbon currency transparent and representative?
7. Does the success rate of government legislation make the UK CCC's plan for 2050 unfeasible?
8. Legislation banning frequent flyers, private jets, Rolls Royces and other high-emission products and services: would it be redundant with a carbon currency?
9. The attraction of "carbon card" to the public in 2010 vs 2020
10. Does the carbon currency tokens price tag on goods and services add to the carbon currency's public popularity with green consumers and compare favourably to the opaque higher prices caused by carbon taxation?
11. Does the transparency of the carbon currency & carbon prices boost business innovation and competition in the energy transition – re hidden subsidies, tax relief or market inconsistencies?
12. What is the bottom line impact on green business due to carbon taxes compared against the carbon currency?
13. Governments regularly abandon carbon taxes – would they stick with the carbon currency?
14. Carbon tax would have an immediate recessionary effect on the economy, would the carbon currency be better or worse?
15. If the UK had a goal to restrict CO2 emissions to a precise figure, which carbon policy would be better suited?
16. How the carbon currency can be implemented locally, nationally, internationally and then globally
17. Why the carbon currency isn’t a tax and what effects would it have on the cash price of carbon-intense goods and services?
18. Why the carbon currency is equitable and carbon taxes are regressive
19. Carbon taxes with carbon dividends are equitable, but are they effective compared to the carbon currency
20. Under the carbon currency, how much does the state decide vs the consumer in the choice of where to save carbon emissions
21. Can rich people really just carry on their carbon-intensive lifestyle under the carbon currency?
22. The solution to climate change will be psychological: how strong will the impact of the carbon currency and personal carbon trading be on people's attitude to climate change?
23. How would children and dependents be rationed under the carbon currency?
24. What level of carbon rationing should be applied at the outset to be effective but not shocking under the carbon currency?
25. At what initial emissions level would the carbon currency only penalise the most flagrant carbon abusers? What benefits would accrue from such a policy?
26. Government would take a percentage of every citizen’s the carbon currency allocation for use in public services - how much would it be?
27. Would a market for carbon tokens make the carbon currency inequitable, is it fairer to forbid trading, or is carbon trading a necessity for business?
28. Would the Royal Family be able to exist under the carbon currency?
29. How would the NHS function under the carbon currency?
30. How would nuclear power fit into the energy mix under the carbon currency?
31. How would the wholesale and retail UK (US / EU...) energy markets need to adapt to ensure carbon tokens are correctly paid by domestic users?
32. Would the carbon currency create pressure to build a new Thames Barrier sooner than planned
33. Outline how the carbon currency would pay for reforestation, soil carbon etc and the policing of existing carbon sinks
34. How would the nation protect low carbon industry under the carbon currency with carbon borders, where a proxy mechanism imposes carbon payments on importers?
35. Would fossil fuel producers be able to cheat when they pay tokens to the central carbon authority?
36. Methane control under the carbon currency – how effective would methane licenses paid for in carbon be at controlling CO2 equivalent emissions
37. EU Chief Ursula von der Leyen wants €1 trillion to make the EU carbon neutral – what are the numbers under the carbon currency?
38. Could the carbon currency effectively regulate the carbon offsetting industry?
39. Would Brazil benefit or suffer from Global the carbon currency, where existing forests were protected and deforested land were open to earn rations from reforestation?
40. What would be the effect of a global carbon currency on the palm oil industry, making clearing of new land unprofitable?
41. How can the carbon currency help or hinder ecological sustainability beyond climate-related effects - UN SDGs?

Research Aims

Reducing one's carbon footprint via participation in a personal carbon trading group raises many issues across several different academic disciplines, including history, sociology, psychology, economics, business administration, sales and marketing, finance, environmental science, political science, and law. Our current list of research topics below is flexible so this list is liable to change.

We plan to attract undergraduates and postgraduates looking for dissertation or research topics, by collaborating with research supervisors at various academic institutions working in this field. There are three main areas where this sort of research can happen: final year undergraduate research projects (and summer projects for undergraduates); projects/dissertations that are part of most master’s degree programmes (and similar level diplomas); doctoral research projects.

Undergraduates normally will have had 2 years of degree work before attempting a dissertation, the norm is 3 years but there are a lot of 4 year programmes now: some with a year in industry and some with a year abroad. For postgraduates, the qualifications and experience are clear. The competence of the students will be difficult to judge beforehand but one can assume that they have shown some competence in getting to where they are.

In all cases the research is supervised by at least one academic supervisor at their institutions. There are some science/engineering projects where the work is done in industry or somewhere else supervised by someone employed in the industry but there will always be academic oversight.

Satisfactory projects should result in at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal, at the very least in open access publication websites and the like. Results would be published under the name of the people doing the work and normally the supervisor giving the address of the institution(s) involved. News media articles that follow linking to the research would be dealt with by both EcoCore and the institution. EcoCore itself will in many cases produce articles using the research.

Research Topics

Carbon currency mechanism: the carbon currency framework based on carbon allowances

1. Social sciences, inequitability, the just transition, climate justice
   • How equitable would the carbon currency mechanism be? Carbon taxes with carbon dividends are promoted as equitable - is this more or less equitable than that? Would the carbon price on goods and services under the carbon currency mechanism be a barrier to low income households managing their carbon budget prudently? Would it compare favourably to the higher product prices caused by carbon taxation? Should special dispensation be allowed for people with special circumstances to receive more allowance under the carbon currency mechanism?
   • At what point would rich people be impacted by the carbon currency mechanism if they were able to buy more tokens in the personal carbon trading scheme, and how equitably would their payments be distributed to sellers on an open market across the nation? At what initial emissions level would the carbon currency only penalise the most flagrant carbon abusers? What benefits would accrue from such a policy?
   • Case study: if the Royal Family were subject to the carbon currency mechanism, how much would they need to be subsidised by the state to facilitate their high carbon footprint? How does this compare to the financial subsidy that they currently receive from the state - is it proportionately much more or similar, comparing both average state carbon allowances and average annual income?
2. Psychology / consumer habits / geography / sustainability
   • Compare purchasing habits of lone-acting citizens vs EcoCounts participant with group & motivational support vs citizens in personal carbon trading group (when & where it existed?)
   • How quickly would someone living with the carbon currency become prudent with carbon tokens? Is it easier than learning financial prudence? Is it more straight-forward because it's the second currency or does it make life significantly more difficult, and if so, for what proportion of the population?
   • How powerful is EcoCounts &/or the carbon currency as an action bringing a sense of empowerment and counteracting climate change-induced negativity, incidents of climate anxiety and depression? How much does group participation in EcoCounts boost the sense of accomplishment or efficacy in participants' actions? Estimate comparative significance of EcoCounts as it is now (carbon footprint reduction), future EcoCounts personal carbon trading group, citizens living with national carbon currency.
   • How effectively would a national carbon currency popularise citizen action as highly visible, transparent and socially equitable and become a social norm? Is it probable that society would create a narrative that this large social change is a good, just and fulfilling means of action against the common threat of climate change? Are there any specific examples of social movements that would be fulfilled? To what extent do "birth strikers" feel that participation would fulfil their expectation of a positive outcome for humanity in the face of climate change? (Birth strikers publicly self-identify as particularly psychologically affected by climate change and would be a ready-made subject group for surveys)
3. Micro-economics
   • At what level of reduction would allowances start to impact purchasing choices broadly, bearing in mind research pointing to significant inequitable distribution of CO2 emissions across the population? How much must the allowances be reduced from the current national average carbon footprint for participation to show significant distribution of personal impact on lifestyles, bearing in mind personal carbon trading is allowed? What level of carbon trading should be expected? Estimate the maximum sustainable rate of CO2 emissions reduction under the carbon currency mechanism for people
   • Examine the carbon currency mechanism for structural faults or loopholes. Compare probably pricing outcomes arising with the mechanism for transparency and accuracy in comparison with carbon taxation or legislation policies. Is the carbon price of goods and services as created by the carbon currency mechanism transparent and representative? What instances are there in which the carbon price would be distorted? Survey product and services markets for potential tendencies to result in shortages and lack of availability under the mechanism, i.e. in context of lack of alternatives. What effects would the carbon currency mechanism have on the cash price of carbon-intense goods and services? Is a high carbon token price on a product liable to cause a low cash price & vice-versa?
   • What inherent stimulus or competitive advantage would green businesses receive in the economy under the carbon currency mechanism, compared to carbon taxes or regulation? What would be the impact under future scenarios on oil companies: business-as-usual, carbon taxation, carbon currency, direct rationing. Would the carbon currency mechanism inhibit the number of large-scale construction projects, for instance, to build a new Thames Barrier? Estimate the maximum sustainable rate of CO2 emissions reduction under the carbon currency mechanism for business, for industry
4. Macro-economics
   • Estimate the maximum sustainable rate of CO2 emissions reduction for an economy under the carbon currency, also compared to carbon taxation. Would the carbon currency mechanism have a recessionary effect on the economy, and if so at what point and by how much? What is the economic elasticity of fossil fuel demand under the carbon currency mechanism compared to other policies?
   • If the net worth of an oil concern is dependant on its total exploitable reserves, would introduction of the carbon currency framework cause a financial meltdown?
   • Government would take a percentage of every citizen’s the carbon currency allocation for use in public services - how much would it be? How much control would the state retain under the carbon currency mechanism to either subsidise or target or otherwise influence CO2 emissions from different sectors and how would such state intervention be implemented?
5. Environment / Energy policy and Carbon Accounting
   • How many of the UK Gov't Climate Change Committee's proposals for CO2 emissions reduction mechanisms in the economy would not need state implementation due to sufficient coverage under citizen or business actions under a carbon currency based on personal carbon allowances?
   • Determine a methodology to balance payments from the carbon currency supply to the carbon drawdown sector and show whether the carbon currency could pay enough for reforestation, soil carbon etc and the policing of existing carbon sinks. Take an example, e.g. would Brazil benefit or suffer from a global carbon currency, where existing forests were protected and deforested land and carbon sinks were open to earn tokens from reforestation, paid for by a UN carbon bank from a negotiated global carbon budget?
   • How can the carbon currency mechanism help or hinder ecological sustainability beyond climate-related effects / UN SDG 13?
   • How would the wholesale and retail UK (US / EU...) energy markets need to adapt to ensure carbon tokens are correctly paid by domestic users? What design of electricity market for today's energy mix allows the CO2 emissions to be paid in tokens by ultimate consumers from carbon allowances under the carbon currency mechanism? How would nuclear power fare under the carbon currency? What is the carbon footprint of a nuclear powerstation, uranium supply, radioactive waste storage and disposal? https://theconversation.com/energy-generators-soaring-revenues-highlight-deep-problems-in-the-way-britain-prices-its-electricity-205951 Prof Michael Grubb, Energy & Climate Change, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.
   • Methane control under the carbon currency mechanism – how effective would methane licenses be in controlling CO2 equivalent emissions, considering they are paid for in carbon currency
6. Political History
   • What features of the carbon currency proposals created by the Blair government in 2008 appealed or did not appeal to the public and gov't? What changes are there in 2023?
   • What is the history of governments abandoning carbon taxes and how consistent is government carbon policy in comparison to historical rationing programs?
7. Business Administration
   • Under the carbon currency mechanism, would the transparency of carbon prices on every product/service boost business innovation and competition in the energy transition, when considering other policies' hidden subsidies, tax relief situations and market inconsistencies?
   • Compare the government's bureaucratic cost for setting up and running the carbon currency mechanism compared to other carbon taxation, carbon taxation with dividends, and regulation
   • How would the NHS function under the carbon currency mechanism, in particular what percentage of a participant's allocation would have to be withheld by the state to cover public services?
   • What would be the cost of CBAMs under the carbon currency mechanism, where a proxy mechanism imposes carbon payments on importers?
   • Estimate the cost to business for dealing with the carbon currency in their back-office, in their accounts and their bookkeeping. What is the bottom line impact on green businesses due to the carbon currency mechanism compared to carbon taxes or regulation?
8. Fossil fuel industry
   • Fossil fuel corporations are liable under the carbon currency mechanism to pay the gov't in carbon tokens for all CO2 production. This could be audited either at the point of sale, i.e. payment per unit of fossil fuel sold, or at the point of extraction. The difference would be significant, e.g. an oil well will routinely flare gas - this would count as subject to audit, or a coal mine will emit large amounts of methane.