Global Warming Bonds

Can we stop Global Warming? Many people believe that despite the Kyoto agreement, we are not moving fast enough to cut our dependence on fossil fuels.

Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, has come up with his own radical proposal to create incentives that will make us change our behaviour faster.

He suggests that governments should issue “Global Warming Bonds”, to compensate individuals, companies and countries who cut fossil fuel emissions. The idea is that the bonds would start to pay out around the year 2045 and would be paid for by our grandchildren through taxation.

His paper focuses particularly on transport, which is responsible for a third of all energy consumption in the UK today. He calculates that to supply enough renewable energy just for our current transport needs, would require a ring of wind farms ten kilometres deep all around the coastline of Britain.