Ecologist Thomas Crowther’s research inspired countless tree-planting campaigns, greenwashing, and attacks from scientists. Now he’s back with a new plan for nature restoration.
The amount of “tokens” on the market is capped. This creates scarcity, and should help map out costs that used to be externalised, outside of the price of what pollutes. The credits force the cost of externality to be internalised into the price.
The idea is very good.
The issues are that it could in some cases actually slow down progress on cleaner processes and that the pricing can be very wrong, it all depends on how many credits are made avaliable on the market.
Another issue is that it, if poorly implemented, can create unfair competition, e.g. flooding the market EU market with cheap products from other continents where regulation differs and no import taxes to match that gap.
The amount of “tokens” on the market is capped. This creates scarcity, and should help map out costs that used to be externalised, outside of the price of what pollutes. The credits force the cost of externality to be internalised into the price.
The idea is very good.
The issues are that it could in some cases actually slow down progress on cleaner processes and that the pricing can be very wrong, it all depends on how many credits are made avaliable on the market.
Another issue is that it, if poorly implemented, can create unfair competition, e.g. flooding the market EU market with cheap products from other continents where regulation differs and no import taxes to match that gap.