Personal Carbon Trading - A response from the office of David Cameron (UK Tory leader)

Jun 30th, 2008

We’ve all heard how carbon traders are getting rich at the expense of us all, and very very little is being achieved with this regarding carbon reduction.

OK, so now we have PERSONAL CARBON TRADING.

Personal carbon trading would allow individuals to surrender their credits as they made certain purchases that resulted in emissions, such as electricity and fuel. Those who needed or wanted to emit more than their allowance would have to buy extra credits from those who could emit less than their allowance, thus rewarding low-emitters.

I could understand the socialist leaning labour party coming out with such nonsense, but when I heard that Tim Yeo (Conservative) was chairman of the committee looking at this, and he had said:

We found that personal carbon trading has real potential to engage the population in the fight against climate change and to achieve significant emissions reductions in a progressive way.

Then I started to become concerned.

I wrote to my MP, Tim Yeo, and David Cameron, expressing my concerns and pleading for a reversal in thinking on this. Nothing received back from Tim Yeo. My MP responded immediately in a suitable manner, saying he would discuss with Tim Yeo. Today, I had a response back from David Camerons office, which did not help at all.

Far from ruling it out, David Cameron seems to be all in favour:

We believe that Personal Carbon Trading is an interesting proposal. However, there are a number of conditions that would need to be
satisfied before its implementation. Millions of personal transactions
would have to be recorded and stored on a massive database, and the
public is rightly concerned with the issue of storing personal data. We
also recognise the possibility of black market trading of credit, which
would ultimately leave the poorest in society most vulnerable.

In my humble opinion, this is another Poll Tax waiting in the wings for the Tories, but that aside, and let’s forget about the databases with their inherent lack of security, as well as the potential for illegal trading and other criminal activities.

Let’s look at what this would mean to all of us, personally.

Every time we bought petrol, travelled in a plane, and potentially, whenever we got on a bus or a train, we would need our little plastic card. One assumes one would not be allowed petrol or entrance without the card, but then at the end of the month, we would get charged for what we had used.
OK, there will always be some people who use less carbon than others, and might get some credit, but chances are this scheme will also apply to gas and electricity used in the home, as well as any varity of things we might purchase. There is no limit to where this little plastic card would be a requirement, which would make it an id card in all but name.

This has very little to do with saving the planet, and a whole lot to do with making sure we do as we are being programmed to do.