Eco Currency

“We must not fail the billions who look to the international community to fulfill the promise of the Millennium Declaration for a better world. Let us meet in September to keep the promise.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

A new agenda by Ban Ki-moon shows what steps to take to reach the Millennium goals by 2015. Estimated is that annual funding needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals is of the order of $50 billion, a Tobin tax could fund this for a 0.05% tobin tax (based on currency transaction figures from 1995) would already revenue between $134 billion and $149 billion annually.

Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy announce €2.4bn funding to help poor countries cope with climate change

Tobin tax becomes a realistic concept when Brown and Sarkozy proposed it to the UN. Brown and Sarkozy agree with something Tim Gore, Oxfam’s EU climate change policy adviser, said; “EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new – it’s made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made.”

Hackers have recently found their ways into databases of the Brazilian governments. The aim were so-called  transport permits which allows transportation of timber.

Chris Martenson gives a crash course of US Economic history, and an alarming statement on current trends.

This is a series of videos by Chris Martenson, explaining the basics of United States/global economy. In just under three and a half hours he goes through the basic factors that formed the economy of today. He also gives a view on possibilities how to handle the resulting crisis. It is a worthwhile sit if one wants to grasp a basic understanding and everything is presented in a way that is also understandable by the average Joe. Downside to this simplicity that the video sometimes lacks depth and gives some very simplistic examples.

Getting the money to Alberto, which is explained in the previous post, is a nice idea. However, one can not assume to do this without having an overview of the context of the world and the (main) stakeholders that play a part in this plan. Although we have not yet have the full picture and by no means claim the to bring the complete truth to the matter, we have started with an enquiry that can start to explain some elements in the solution.

This chart visualizes our exploration of the context of the world in which the eco currency is to be introduced

The current situation and the potential of eco-currency

Currently a brazilian farmer like Alberto, with land in a rain forest doesn’t have much choice to survive. The easiest way for him to make any money out of his land is to cut the wood, burn the rest of it and turn it into farmland so he can start agriculture.

photo by Alan Cleaver on Flickr

Even though it is yet unclear how the proposed system will get its money (Tobin tax has been proposed), a study by Mother Jones shows us we should carefully think about how we name it.

American participants in this experiment -with self acclaimed, varied political preferences- were proposed a program that would increase prices of carbon emitting activities. The extra costs would be directly used to pay for renewable energies or carbon capture and sequestration. All participants received the exact same proposal except for the name of the surcharge, half the people read about a “carbon tax”, the other half about “carbon offset”. They were finally asked to choose between purchasing two identical products, one only being costlier because it had this surcharge.