Mitigation of Global Warming with Focus on Personal Carbon Allowances

The paper discusses a novel approach to address the carbon challenge by making it personal. Just as commodities like food and petrol are rationed at times of scarcity, carbon, in principle, can also be rationed, say, on a per capita basis. This, of course, raises serious equity issues since presently consumers in different parts of the world have widely different carbon footprints. But the idea that consumers are ultimately responsible for an economy’s overall carbon emissions and must be empowered to ration their environmental impact is gaining support in some circles.