Use markets to solve climate crisis

Regarding the news related to the G20 and COP26 2021 climate discussion: Use markets to solve the climate crisis.

I love planet Earth, as many of you do too, but we aren’t doing the best job of showing it our love. The climate mess we’ve made will be leaving us with more scars. If we could miraculously reduce emissions to zero today and remove existing emissions from the atmosphere, we would still need to adapt to the changes baked into the earth’s climate systems.

So, what can we do? We could do nothing and watch events unfold, we could put draconian laws in place and force us to net-zero, or we could use the power of markets to incentivize our way to net-zero.

If the true cost of carbon emissions is gradually added to the cost of extracting energy, and an import tariff is added to goods imported from countries without a price on carbon, the market will move us to net-zero. The market revenues can be used to mitigate the impacts we will face and fund adaptation to the changing climate.

If we can make a crypto currency market by mining data bits from a computer, we can surely find a way to create a market for carbon emissions. Let’s put a price on carbon!”

Andrew Walker

Spokane