This is in marked contrast to a strategy relying on the setting of targets which may not be met “owing to unforeseen circumstances” and for which it would therefore not even be possible to apportion blame for failure. Furthermore, personal carbon rationing will act as a driver towards limiting the awesome impact of climate change far more effectively than simply trying to encourage individuals to adopt green practices.The prime responsibility for such a radical transformation lies with world leaders. And this structured synergy between social justice, market forces and human survival makes the “price of carbon” equal to the price of survival. It puts a premium on conservation for everyone: people who are not contributing to degrading the planet’s climate system, principally but not exclusively those living in Third World countries, become recipients of revenue arising from the sale of their unused carbon entitlements to those still engaging in energy-profligate activity. This then inevitably leads to a rapid international embarkation on the route to equal per capita emissions of greenhouse gases.Overall the C&C strategy has unique characteristics: first and foremost, by its very nature, it assures governments of success in delivering the internationally agreed degree of reduction in greenhouse gases. To take just one example: the carbon dioxide emission equivalents per passenger from just one round flight from London to New York and back are about three times this entire annual allowance.Contraction & Convergence would also have important effects at an international level. Current economic activity and personal lifestyles have created a vicious cycle in which in general the affluent world has been advantaged by its use of fossil fuels whilst the Third World has suffered an unequal share of the consequent damage.

You can easily calculate your own rough annual carbon dioxide emissions from the table on page 35 and see how this current total to relates to the one-and-a-half ton total that would need to be your limit if the damage from climate change is to be limited sufficiently. One of the substantial benefits of the C&C framework is that it reverses this process by creating a virtuous spiral. In most cases, the gap between our current habits and the way we need to be living is enormous. Could anyone reasonably argue that policy can be formulated on the proposition of an unequal distribution of the capacity of the global commons to absorb a quantity of greenhouse gases that does not lead to a serious destabilisation of the world’s climate?Contraction & Convergence will require the UK to reduce its current average per capita carbon dioxide emissions of roughly 10 tons (two-and-a-half times the world average) to about one-and-a-half tons by 2030. Of course it is only governments that can enforce a system in which individuals exercise their responsibilities in this way.

There is growing international support for the Global Commons Institute’s Contraction & Convergence framework – an ingenious mechanism which as soon as one understands it immediately appears to be the only way forward. It is based on principles of precaution and equity enshrined in the UN Climate Treaty: the process by which the future allocation of carbon rations becomes equal per capita globally by an agreed year, while aggregate global emissions are reduced year-on-year to their relatively safe level of concentration. This enables politicians and civil servants to maintain their faith in the effectiveness of “soft”‘ policy options and relieves them of the need to admit that the costs of damage from climate change already significantly exceed the benefits of our energy-profligate lifestyles. The government now surely knows that this approach can do no more than scratch the surface of the problem. To believe that most people will be prepared to forego much of the current lifestyles voluntarily is to live in cloud-cuckoo land.There is, however, some room for optimism. They believe that strategies of promoting and subsidising voluntary action, based on better education and the wider take-up of energy saving measures, will deliver in time the essential degree of reduction required.