THE FIRST AND LAST BANK

A carbon standard?

The idea is nothing if not audacious: solving global warming by removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it, perhaps in bank vaults where it would function like the gold at Fort Knox. Peebles, an anthropologist at the University of Stockholm, makes a reasonable case that this plan enjoys a modest following around the world among economists. He points out that all efforts to reverse global warming have failed. Its major cause, atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is increasing steadily. Citizens of prosperous nations, the major offenders, oppose the sacrifices necessary to reduce emissions, and their governments have taken note. Efforts to bypass governments and persuade polluters to do the right thing have also failed. Clever ideas for carbon credits and carbon taxes are “riddled with fraud,” as clever entrepreneurs game the system to earn credits without lowering emissions. Peebles lays out his solution, beginning with a lesson in economics that occupies most of the book and heavily emphasizes gold. It’s no longer a medium of exchange or the basis of any nation’s currency, but gold remains a store of value and a priceless symbol of “our identity, never to be dismantled or dispersed.” He proposes a substitute system in the form of carbon blocks (“biochar”) stored in community-owned banks as “preservers of a common good.” Today’s biochar is produced by burning organic material, and he assumes that the problem of extracting carbon from the atmosphere economically has been solved. Readers who recall their college economics will better grasp his explanation, and all will appreciate the generous, elaborate drawings that provide an impressionistic and occasionally specific picture of how it might work.

No magic bullet, but an ingenious thought experiment.