numbers, not adjectives — D. J. C. MacKay

Equitable Atmosphere Climate Cooperative, worked example

byCarl Edward Rasmussen, 2024-05-27

The Equitable Atmosphere Climate Cooperative (EACC) is a proposal for a gloabal carbon fee and dividend system which could help address climate change. This page is a worked example, showing what the consequences of the EACC would be for a selection of countries or regions, to illustrate the possible consequences.

In order to make quantitative assessments, we have to make assumptions, which fall into two categories:

• price: in the EACC the price per ton of CO₂ is determined by voting: an annual open ballot, median vote, one vote per country. But we won't know how countries will vote, and the price may change over time. For illustrative purposes, assume that the price is €76 per ton of CO₂, equal to the end of May 2024 price in the EU ETS (Emission Trading System).
• membership: it is unknown which countries will chose to become members. Here, for illustrative purposes, assume that all countries become members. This is probably too optimistic, and thus represents a best possible scenario.

In the table below, a number of populous regions are listed, together with their (2022) CO₂ per capita annual emissions. Also listed is the per capita net annual price of membership of the EACC in €, where negative prices indicate that the country is a net beneficiary. The final column gives the price of EACC membership in proportion to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the region, again negative values indicate net beneficiary.

region	2022 CO2 emission	net EACC membership price	relative price
	ton per person per year	€ per person per year	proportion of GDP
China	8.0	250	1.5%
India	2.0	-205	-3.4%
European Union	6.2	114	0.3%
United States	14.9	775	1.3%
Indonesia	2.6	-160	-1.5%
Pakistan	0.8	-296	-6.2%
Brazil	2.2	-190	-1.4%
Nigeria	0.6	-312	-6.9%
Bangladesh	0.6	-312	-5.7%
Russia	11.4	524	2.0%
Japan	8.5	289	0.8%
Ethiopia	0.2	-342	-16.0%
United Kingdom	4.7	0	0.0%
whole World	4.7	0	-

The table shows that countries with lower than average per capita annual emissions are net beneficiaries, whereas countries with higher than average emissions are net contributors. It is also seen, that poor countries, which generally have contributed very little to climate change will benefit substantially in relation to their GDP. Note, that the exact values are subject to the assumptions discussed above the table, and will change over time.

To be really effective, the price would probably need to be higher than the €76 per ton value copied from the EU ETS.

Data are taken from ourworldindata.org

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