Environment Minister David Miliband has proposed personal carbon taxation. It would act as a sort of consumer level carbon trading, with individuals getting cards that record their carbon usage. High consumers would use up their allowances quickly and low users could trade with them. The great leveller would be that, no matter where a person stood in society, the allowance would be the same.

Providing they see this through it could be a great driver for uptake of energy efficient products and renewables. The low carbon users could use the extra income from selling their carbon points to invest in cutting them further and the heavy users might learn to start balancing their carbon budgets and deciding which luxuries were really worth it.

This scheme, or a very similar model, has been proposed before, but I can’t track down just where at present.

via Treehugger

Technorati tag: Carbon Trading, CO2