Carbonomics no.1: The Carbon Theory of Value.

This chapter shows how the Carbon spiral methodology can be used as the basis of national and global Carbon budgets to regulate the climate. The Carbon spiral analysis is not merely a means of measuring ecological damage it is also a new accounting system, a geophysiological budgetary system, for regulating the climate. In a sustainable green world, Carbon budgets would replace monetary budgets; a living economy (based primarily on Trees) would replace a dead economy (based on fossil fuels); and, sustainable, regional Wood economies would replace an unsustainable, global economy. Carbon would be an Earth-based currency in comparison to ecocidal currencies such as petro-dollars, the yen or gold. There is no such thing as a steady state economy, only a steady state climate. A steady state climate can be created only by a Carbon based economy not a cash based economy. Just as economists meticulously measure the demand and supply sides of a monetary economy so greens will have to do the same for the Earth’s Carbon spiral if they are to protect the Earth’s life-sustaining processes.

EIGHT: THE GLOBAL CARBON BUDGET.

A global scientific body like the inter-governmental panel on climate change (ipcc) - which, for the sake of argument, can be called here the global scientific council (gsc) - would be responsible for regulating the climate and maintaining a sustainable Planet. This body would be responsible for setting the concentration of atmospheric Carbon and determining the scale of the Planet’s Forest cover.

The gsc would compile a global Carbon audit to measure the amount of Carbon on the land, in the sea, and in the atmosphere as well as the rate at which Carbon flows between them. An outline of the global Carbon spiral has been highlighted earlier and this would form the basis of a global Carbon audit.

The gsc would allocate Carbon budgets to each country around the world i.e. the amount of Carbon they would be allowed to release into the atmosphere and their level of Forest cover. All countries would take equal responsibility for reducing Carbon emissions and helping to protect the Earth’s Forest cover because they all have a stake in maintaining climatic stability - although, as will be shown, during the transition to a sustainable Planet this would not mean that all countries would have to reduce their Carbon emissions, or Reforest their land, by the same percent.

Assuming that an agreement had been reached between the over-industrialized nations and the third world concerning the need for countries to balance their Carbon budgets it would not be possible to immediately create a sustainable Planet. There would have to be a transition period whilst the over-industrialized paid off their Carbon debts and third world countries spent their Carbon credits.

A provisional global Carbon budget would have to be established to regulate the transition to a sustainable Planet. The immediate creation of a sustainable Planet is impossible because the Carbon debts of some of the over-industrialized nations are so enormous that if they had to balance their national Carbon budgets within too short a space of time they would have to stop releasing any Carbon emissions. This would cause a total collapse of their entire industrial infrastructure. On the other hand, if the Carbon creditors had to spend their Carbon credits in too short a period they would dump so much pollution into the atmosphere they would considerably boost global warming. A provisional global Carbon budget would therefore have to ensure that the Carbon debtors repaid their Carbon debts at a realistic pace and the Carbon creditors spent their Carbon credits at a pace which would not exacerbate global warming.

During the transition to a sustainable Planet, national governments would work out regional Carbon budgets for each region within their borders. Each region would have to assess the impact of their social and economic policies on their Carbon budget i.e. their effect on Carbon emissions AND net primary production (i.e. Photosynthesis). Regions would be allowed to implement only those policies which kept within the limitations of their regional Carbon budget. The creation of regional Carbon budgets is necessary as transition to the eventual creation of regional Wood economies. The objective of national government would be to set regional budgets so that by the time it had balanced its national Carbon budget, each region would also have balanced their regional Carbon budgets and established regional Wood economies.

During the transition period each country would reorganizeitself along geophysiological lines - in which approximately one-third of the land would be given over as Wilderness areas, one-third would be Forested as a climate regulator, and one-third would become regional Wood economies.

Once all countries around the world had balanced their Carbon budgets, redistributed land along geophysiological lines, and created regional Wood economies, this would mark the start of a sustainable Planet. Once a sustainable Planet had been created it would be possible to dispense with the bureaucracy of regional Carbon budgets because countries would meet their national Carbon budgets solely by varying their Forest thermostat zones. Each region would be able to exploit the Phytomass resources within their region as intensively as they wished (not forgetting that these are the only resources they would have to rely upon). The responsibility of national governments would be to use the Forest thermostat zones to counter the impact of the countries’ regions in order to fulfill the requirements of their national Carbon budgets.

NINE: THE STRUCTURE OF A STEADY STATE CLIMATE.

Given that the Earth’s geophysiology, including its climate, is a unitary entity then all countries around the world would have to co-operate in regulating the climate. This necessitates a world government. It is simply not realistic for countries to continue advocating ecological sovereignty so that they can go on dumping as much pollution into the atmosphere as they want, and strip mining as much of their forests as they want.

A global eco-constitution would determine the powers of the various branches of the world government. It would guarantee the geophysiological division of the Earth and thus the survival of all life forms on Earth. The world government would also help to protect Wilderness areas.

Eco-constitutions and bills of rights are indispensable but, ultimately, they are only bits of paper. The primary check against a world government can only be political institutions. The institution best able to play such a role is regional governments (the size of county councils). Regional governments would be set up in all countries around the world. They would be the primary state institutions in the new ecological order and would possess the most legal powers.

Regional governments would preside over regional wood economies in which humans would obtain all the raw materials, food, clothes, commodities, and energy they needed from Forests cultivated in their region.[2] It is imperative that everyone in every region should be able to walk around their region to see for themselves the scale of the Forest resources they have at their disposal.

The Earth’s climate can be regulated by varying both the amount of Carbon released into the atmosphere and the scale of Forest cover. Until the global Carbon budget has been worked out it can be speculated that one-third of the Earth’s land surface would be needed for Forests solely to vary the scale of the Earth’s Forest cover to control global average temperatures.

It is probably true that the current Earth value of Wildlife species is such that they should be given control over the entire Earth. It will take some time before it is possible to match Earth value with the correct scale of land which should be designated as Wilderness.

There are moral reasons for arguing that, at the very least, one-third of the Planet’s land surface should immediately be designated as Wilderness and reserved exclusively for the use of Wildlife. Wildlife created the Earth’s habitability and also created humans so humans owe a geophysiological and existential debt to Wildlife. Humans ought to repay this debt firstly, by not using, abusing or killing Animals and, secondly, by designating, as a minimum, one-third of the land in every country as Wilderness.

The creation of Wilderness areas would prevent attempts from being made to control the Earth’s climate by replacing what is left of the Earth’s natural Forests, Wilderness areas, land designated as areas of outstanding natural beauty, and other natural habitats etc., with tree pharms extracting huge quantities of Carbon from the atmosphere as rapidly as possible. The ecological feasibility of tree pharms will not be discussed here.

Humans would be allowed to establish regional Wood economies only on approximately one-third of the Earth’s land surface. Although they could use approximately one-third of the land to regulate the scale of the Earth’s Forest cover and stablize the global climate, they would not be allowed to live in these areas nor use any of the Forests’ resources except where it was necessary for climate regulation.[3]

TEN: CARBON AS THE CURRENCY OF A SUSTAINABLE PLANET.

If humans are to prevent a climatic disaster and regulate the climate they must decrease global Carbon emissions by ending their current dependence on fossil fuels and increase the scale of the Earth’s Forest cover. If humans are to create a sustainable Planet and survive in perpetuity on Earth they must end their current dependence on non renewable resources and rely primarily upon renewable resources. The regulation of the climate and the creation of a sustainable Planet necessitate the creation of Wood economies in which humans derive the vast majority of their raw materials, clothes, energy, commodities, and food from Trees.[4]

A distinction needs to be made between renewable forms of energy (Photosynthesis) and solar forms of energy (solar power, photovoltaics, wind, wave, and hydro-electric). Firstly, unlike Phytomass energy which renews itself when used, solar forms of energy are not renewable - they do not renew themselves. Secondly, whilst renewable energy produces only a limited amount of energy i.e. the amount of Photosynthesis that can be carried out by Plants, solar forms of energy are capable of generating astronomical levels of energy which exist in even greater abundance than conventional sources of energy such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy.[5]

The regulation of the climate necessitates a ban on solar forms of energy[6] because solar energy produces so much energy it has the potential to cause vastly more ecological damage than fossil fuels.[7] The ecological damage caused by solar power consists of the construction of massive solar powered energy supplies e.g. the colossal hydro-electric power schemes in India (the Narmada dam); China (the Three Gorges project on the Yangtse); Brazil (the Caracas project), etc., as well as the use to which astronomic supplies of energy would be put.[8]

It is not merely the supply of energy which distinguishes a Wood economy from a solar economy. Although there would be a fundamental change in the supply of energy in a solar economy there would not be many other changes. A solar economy would continue to rely upon, and thus legitimate, the current ecologically disastrous ways of supplying raw materials, clothes, commodities, and food. Most importantly of all, it would reinforce and even exacerbate the exploitation of Animals which, as has been pointed out, is the biggest cause of ecological devastation. Solar power would not only be responsible for directly causing a massive level of damage to the Planet’s ecology, it would also be responsible for indirectly causing even more damage by reinforcing many of the current forms of ecological destruction. A solar economy is simply a fossil fuelled economy without the fossil fuels. The attempt to create a solar economy ought to be opposed merely because it would continue to prop up the Animal exploitation industry.

The vital importance of Forests in the regulating the Planet’s climate and the vital importance of Wood economies in providing raw materials, clothes, commodities, energy, and food, means that Carbon would be the currency of the future. The only currency of a sustainable Planet is not gold, the dollar, the yen nor any other monetary denomination but Carbon.

The Earth has a number of geophysiological limitations and it has been seen that there comes a point when regions, countries, and the Earth, could be said to be ‘full up’. Just as at the moment it is necessary for individuals/corporations/political authorities to live within their economic means so, in a green world, it would be critical for individuals to live within their ecological means; for regions to live within their regional Carbon budgets; and for the human race to live within its geophysiological means i.e. by ensuring that it does not dump excessive quantities of Carbon into the atmosphere and does not ransack the Earth’s Forest cover. If humans depended for their survival and well being upon the income drawn from regional Phytomass resources, and if national governments used their Forest zones to meet their Carbon budget requirements, then this would automatically fulfil the objectives of the global Carbon budget and thus bring about climatic stability and a sustainable Planet.

Human expansionism is currently causing such a vast scale of ecological destruction that it is transgressing not merely ecological, but geophysiological, limitations. The primary check against humanist expansionism on a sustainable Planet would be the geophysiological structure outlined above in which two thirds of the Planet is effectively put off-limits to human exploitation. The second main check would be regional Wood economies because humans would have to rely for their survival only on the resources produced within that region.[9]

To put this as graphically as possible. Each year, say at the start of the new year, everyone in the region would go out into their Forests to collect their annual Phytomass resources.[10] They would know that if they took too much wood from the Forest there would be less available for the following year. After collecting what they wanted, the Phytomass income would be placed in the town square so that everyone in the region could see what resources were available for the following year. People would then vote on how much of the Wood pile should be spent on the region’s various activities. Perhaps they might decide to convert some of the Wood into resources to provide facilities, food, clothing, etc for new arrivals (whether kids or immigrants). Some of it might be allocated to the production of more cars or the construction of new buildings[11] but if they decided to use more of the Wood on one of these objectives they would automatically find that they had less for other objectives. The days when humans could have more and more of everything they wanted is over. Decisions about what will be done with the annual Phytomass income would be decided through a democratic vote by everyone living in the region, and role of the regional government would be to implement these decisions.

In comparison to capitalism which promotes endless economic growth through the reckless exploitation of the Earth’s capital resources, and in comparison to solar economies which seek endless economic growth through the exploitation of the astronomic power of the sun, a global system of regional Wood economies would provide only limited resources and thereby keep human expansionism in check. The massive ecological damage caused by the exponential growth in the numbers of cars, kids, cattle, captal and carnage can be stopped only by the creation of a geophysiologically divided Planet and regional Wood economies.

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PART FOUR: THE FUTURE: THE ROLE OF CARBON IN A SUSTAINABLE PLANET.

EIGHT: THE GLOBAL CARBON BUDGET.

NINE: THE STRUCTURE OF A STEADY STATE CLIMATE.

TEN: CARBON AS THE CURRENCY OF A SUSTAINABLE PLANET.