Medición de beneficios

Price-based rationing (carbon taxes) and tradable rationing (upstream cap-and-trade schemes and downstream tradable energy quotas), the two main approaches offered so far in response to the climate crisis, will largely maintain existing economic inequalities, which will make it exceedingly difficult for citizens at all levels of society to accept sacri- fices and pull together for the duration of the emergency. Carbon taxes may have trouble rapidly curbing demand in sectors such as transportation, where demand for oil products is relatively inelastic (non-responsive to price changes) in the short-term, unless the tax is raised to politically unacceptable or economically catastrophic levels. Effective cap-and- trade schemes may cause substantial price swings and political backlash due to specula- tion-driven price volatility.

One key difference between World War II and the ecological crisis, Cox notes, is the source of shortages. In WWII, the shortages of fuel and rubber that triggered rationing were caused by the growing world war, which cut off or endangered supplies. While some analysts have projected significant emerging shortages of fossil fuels and other resources as a result of overshoot-driven depletion, major shortages have not emerged soon enough to stave off climate chaos. Instead, government policy will be required to induce orderly upstream shortages through bans, rationing and decommissioning schemes. Along with the intentional creation of upstream shortages, offensive rationing downstream and com- prehensive price controls will be required as well to manage demand, if we are to avoid shortages and inflation.

Furthermore, the rationing and price control regime will need to be quite extensive, due to what Cox describes as the “Whack-a-Mole” problem. Efforts at selective rationing and price control regimes during the initial months of the WWII mobilization led to inflation and shortages as pent-up demand — repressed for certain goods — surged into non-con- trolled areas of the economy.

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Policy Proposal

The United States should institute a Rating All Products and Services (RAPS) rationing system, in which all products and services that emit greenhouse gases are rationed using electronic cards (similar to credit or debit cards) and regular, equal greenhouse gas emis- sions allowances freely issued to all citizens. Citizens would be able to sell their unused rations back to the government for cash. The government would then permanently retire the unused rations.

In effect, a parallel currency is established to rapidly and fairly ratchet down demand for greenhouse gas-emitting products and services in concert with upstream controls. Firms up and down supply chains will exchange the received points and quantities (along with cash payments) as they purchase and sell goods. Simultaneously, a zero emissions economy is scaled up to provide alternative to greenhouse gas-emitting products.

elected community volunteers, should give citizens a forum to appeal for extra points or quantity rations and voice complaints to a responsive body.

Creating a functional greenhouse gas point system poses a significant logistical chal- lenge. However, the point ratings for products and services would not need to be immedi- ately perfect in order to have the intended effect. Furthermore, basic necessities would be quantity-rationed in order to ensure equal shares for all, which is not guaranteed in more flexible points rationing regimes.

Once established, the Office of Price Administration and the Environmental Impact As- sessment Service should design and deliver a comprehensive upstream and downstream demand reduction regime with the following features:

■ A rapidly declining national greenhouse gas emissions budget declining to net zero

greenhouse gas emissions by 2025

■ Across-the-board price controls to combat inflation ■ Wage and salary controls, as needed

■ Non-tradable rationing

■ Government buyback and retirement of unused rations

■ Eventual coverage of all core greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors: the food, energy,

transportation, manufacturing, and industrial sectors (It may be politically and ad- ministratively easier to progressively phase in the regime and start with the most easily rated sectors, such as energy)

■ Consumption-based greenhouse gas points scheme ■ Quantity rationing of basic necessities

■ Weekly free allowance issuances to citizens ■ Sharing of rations among family members ■ Appropriately smaller rations for young children ■ Strict enforcement

■ No loopholes for the rich ■ Local citizen rationing boards

The OPA and EIAS should also mandate consumption-based ecological footprint impact labeling on all products and services.

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global transition off of fossil fuels is possible, necessary, and inevitable, according to David Fridley, staff scientist at the Energy Analysis Pro- gram at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Richard Hein- berg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute (and advisor to The Climate Mobilization).

In their book, “Our Renewable Future: Laying Out the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy,” (2016), Fridley and Heinberg argue that a transition to an entirely re- newable energy system is feasible and very much worth pursuing — even though it won’t be cheap or easy. Indeed, they argue a full transition to renewable energy will require a WWII-like mobilization, costing on the order of $200 trillion globally:

The energy transition needs to become the organizing context within which

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