Is now the time to adopt personal carbon allowances?

Addressing the climate crisis has never been more pertinent. The climate crisis refers to the changes in the Earth’s climate that have occurred due to human activity, causing an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This, in turn, has led to rising global temperatures, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, wildfires and floods.

The issue of the climate crisis is often framed as a collective action problem with universal cooperation being the key to solving the crisis, since the atmosphere is a global common. The tragedy of the commons arises due to the public nature of the atmosphere and without the presence of a global governing body, it is the responsibility of each individual country to defy their rational nature and abate their individual greenhouse gas emissions.

Emissions from households form the highest single contributor to overall UK greenhouse emissions; in 2021 this was recorded as 26% of total emissions (ONS, 2023). Given such statistics, there is an ever-growing need to explore possible individual-level solutions towards climate change mitigation. One policy is known as the personal carbon allowance (PCA) scheme. This involves adults receiving an equal, but tradable carbon allowance that reduces as time goes on (Thornton, 2023).

The aim of PCAs is to mitigate citizens' carbon footprint by tying personal action to global carbon reduction targets. The UK is one of the only nations to have seriously considered the introduction of PCAs. In the 2000s, the UK government investigated the potential for PCAs but it was rejected due to its associated technological barriers, high implementation costs and low social acceptability (Fuso Nerini et al., 2021).

However, the concerns surrounding PCAs a couple of decades ago are no longer prevalent due to social and technological changes that may increase the appeal of such a scheme. It had been concluded that significant cost reductions were required to make PCAs an economically viable option. Nowadays, the advancements achieved in information and communication technologies, namely artificial intelligence (AI), make it a far more attractive option (Vinuesa, 2020). This is because such AI capacities shrink the implementation costs and logistical dilemmas for PCAs. This highlights the growing feasibility of PCAs as a public policy tool to help achieve the net-zero emissions goal by 2050, which was outlined in the Paris Agreement (UN, 2022).

Moreover, rapid and growing awareness concerning climate change means that the social acceptability of such a scheme is likely to be higher than previously. There seems to be a shift in public attitudes as there is a greater demand for more ambitious action to help combat the climate crisis (Fuso Nerini et al., 2021). We can also see increasing political commitment towards more ambitious goals. Public and political interests go hand in hand. This is because a lack of public support for a policy typically renders that policy to be impractical politically. Given rising public pressures surrounding climate change, there is likely to be an improved social acceptance of such a scheme as more individuals acknowledge the necessity for it, in turn, making it less politically risky.

There is also a need to re-evaluate PCAs in light of COVID-19. This is due to individual acceptance of restrictions that would have been unthinkable a few years prior, in the interests of public health. The use of tracking apps in monitoring the spread of COVID-19 may indicate that more people are likely to accept tracking related to PCAs in order to combat climate change which would bring about many public health benefits (Fuso Nerini et al., 2021).

However, it is important to note that there are geographical disparities with regards to data privacy concerns. Recent studies show that contact tracing apps were successful in East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan and South Korea (Akinbi et al., 2021). In contrast, there was limited success in Europe and the US due to concerns about data privacy, trust and ethical issues (Sharma and Bashir, 2020). Geographical context therefore plays a crucial role as to whether or not such a policy would be successfully adopted.

Regardless, if not now, then when will we take more drastic steps towards tackling climate change? It might be time to seriously reconsider the possibility of utilising PCAs as an innovative solution to the climate crisis.

Bibliography

Akinbi, A., Forshaw, M. & Blinkhorn, V. (2021). Contact tracing apps for the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review of challenges and future directions for neo-liberal societies. Heal. Inf. Sci. Syst. 9, 18.

Fuso Nerini, F., Fawcett, T., Parag, Y. and Ekins, P. (2021). Personal carbon allowances revisited. Nature Sustainability, 4, 1025-1031.

ONS (2023). UK Environmental Accounts - Office for National Statistics. [online] www.ons.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/bulletins/ukenvironmentalaccounts/2023.

Sharma, T. & Bashir, M. (2020). Use of apps in the COVID-19 response and the loss of privacy protection. Nat. Med. 26, 1165–1167.

Thornton, T. (2023). Are Personal Carbon Allowances the Missing Policy for Addressing Climate Change? | Economics in Context Initiative. [online] www.bu.edu. Available at: https://www.bu.edu/eci/2023/05/17/are-personal-carbon-allowances-the-missing-policy-for-addressing-climate-change/ [Accessed 17 Nov. 2023].

United Nations (2022). For a livable climate: Net-zero commitments must be backed by credible action. [online] United Nations. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition [Accessed 17 Nov. 2023].

Vinuesa, R. et al. (2020). The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Nat.Commun. 11, 233.