By Bruce Eaton
Young Nick Hunter has come up with what could be a truly green idea to solve that perky problem of our transportation spewing out too much carbon dioxide. His Carbon Credits system forces people who have used up their government allotted “carbon credits” to downgrade from say their private car to a more green alternative such as the bus or train. Being government enforced, I assume by law, would force people to either A) ration and monitor their travel or B) get used to riding the train a lot.
Although I am all for the green movement, this has some drawbacks for people who do not live in a city/country outfitted with mass transit. Here in Texas, stuff is so spread out I have to drive two moonfalls just to get to the supermarket. Now if I was forced to use a chuckwagon, well I might as well say goodbye to the wife and kids forever. In Europe or NYC I see this being a good solution to smog and helping out Mother Earth.
[Carbon Credits] VIA [Yanko Design]
Check out http://self.org/, the Solar Electric Light Fund, which will place solar cells for illumination in places that currently burn kerosene for light. One ton of CO2 is eliminated for each $10 donation. Since each of us contributes 15 to 20 tons per year, a donation of $200 would offset an individual’s entire yearly contribution of CO2 while bringing modern lighting to places it’s needed. Sure, better to cut down personal emissions, but (as you say) that’s sometimes hard to do.
I don’t know about buses, but trains have been shown in several studies to be more wasteful than cars. Even when the train is fully loaded with passengers and the car has only the driver on board.
I really wouldn’t be surprised if buses were the same way. Opposing private cars simply because it’s trendy isn’t a good idea if it results in even greater carbon going into the atmosphere.
Nothing like have the government “force” people to keep up with trendy agenda-driven science.
I’m with Shiloh. I’m sure “young Nick Hunter” won’t have a problem with government restriction of people’s freedom of movement, but those of us who don’t live in Oceania will.
[…] Carbon Credits is an ‘interesting’ idea from a design student (Nick Hunter – off topic: what a cool name! Sounds like either a secret agent or porn star) .. basically the idea is almost like a dirty hippie’s wet dream.. The individual is allocated a certain amount of “credits” which would equal a certain amount of Carbon emissions mandated by the Government (heretoforth known as “the man”) The man would able to regulate the amount of carbon emissions being puffed out on the island by controlling the amount of Carbon Credits the inidividual/family can have for a certain time period. The way this works out is that you would be issued some sort of device which would do the measuring, then, when you’ve used up all your credits – it’s time to catch de ‘pink n blue’. I think it’s a novel idea .. it would help out the environment and it would promote more healthy activities (such as walking to ice queen instead of taking the bike/car/horse) .. There are however many question marks which would need to be answered before something like this would be implemented .. and of course this is a conceptual idea ..? I want to know what happens when you’re driving from Somerset to St. Geo and you run out of credits halfway through… or do I have to pay a full years worth of licencing and insurance if I’m only going to use my vehicle 15 days out of the month.. Still though, I could probably do with the excercise.. […]
Maybe it can get a little complicated if used in a different way.