Eighteen years ago, on this day, May 8th, 2008, the two year flirtation with carbon rationing came to an end…
Ministers have scrapped radical plans to test a carbon rationing scheme that would have forced citizens to carry a carbon card to swipe every time they bought petrol or paid an electricity bill.
The plan was announced by David Miliband, former environment secretary, in 2006 as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle global warming. But officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said today that the idea was too expensive and would be unpopular.
Defra said a feasibility study found that carbon rationing was “an idea ahead of its time in terms of its public acceptability and the technology to bring down costs.” While there were “no insurmountable technical obstacles”, the study found such a scheme would cost £1-2bn each year and would be perceived as unfair.
Adam, D. 2008.Government scraps ‘unrepresentative’ carbon card scheme. The Guardian, May 8.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 2006 the climate issue had “broken through” again (Al Gore’s film, Kyoto-sequel preparations, Hurricane Katrina, EUETS, Climate Camp etc etc) and the British state had started looking at what it could do (still in the context of a target of a 60 per cent reduction by 2050 target). Carbon rationing was in the mix, though it’s not clear to me how seriously.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can know it’s an emergency and still be unable to act, to be paralysed by complexity, indecision, powerlessness. Welcome to the Anthropocene.
What happened nextThe whole carbon rationing thing kinda disappeared. The best thing it left us was two really good young adult fiction novels by Saci Lloyd – the Carbon Diaries 2015 and Carbon Diaries 2017.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Personal Carbon Trading:a critical examination of proposals for the UK. Tyndall Working Paper 136.
Gill Seyfang, Irene Lorenzoni and Michael Nye August 2009
Also on this day:
May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London
May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.
May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.
May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper