Thursday, November 16, 2006

Indeed I believe that young people are crucial in influencing today's enviromental problems.

I would like you to consider a system of 'Carbon Cards' (or DTQ's - Domestic tradable quotas) - a scheme designed to reduce emissions from all forms of energy use.

In such a scheme, everyone would have an emissions quota, meaning they would have a specified amount of untis of 'energy' to use per year.

Citizens would be issued with a 'carbon card', which would be swiped every time you buy petrol, diesel, coal, gas or elcetricty or every time you book a rail or plane ticket. Over half of adults are below-average emitters, and therefore would be able to sell their leftover units, so the scheme would be popular with the majority of the public for this reason.

Young people could become, quite literally, enviromental-stakeholders. They could get behind this idea and encourage adults to get involved. This could certainly represent a step in the right direction to solving the potentially huge impact of climate change in the near future

From Struan Stevenson, MEP for Scotland (Conservative).
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2 comments:

Cathkin high school said...

the only thing young people can do is to think about changing the environment, we can't do it i personally blame people in factories, so we need to start thinking about the new ways of electricity which we already no if we don't have this done on the next 10-20 years then i feel we might be to late.

12:42 PM
Anonymous said...

I think that's a good, practical idea from Struan but how would it work in practice? can you imagine some ned on a bus who has forgotten his 'carbon card' It would take a whole new type of education in Schools such as yours, Cathin High. Is your school full of Neds who would laugh at this scheme ? or would it work well in places such as cambuslang? I do like the idea of trading in carbon credits though and with the right thinking behind introduction it could work. Who would set the limits for each person and how much would the excess units sell for. Does the Conservative party have such plans ?
What about credits for recycling as well, then people would have a real incentive for cutting down on wastful use of the Earth's resources.

Cheers

Recyclogirl

12:47 PM

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