Breath of Fresh Air

Philanthropy Today continues to be far more interesting than other news outlets in my life such as Google News, NPR, or co-workers:

British Charity Takes New Approach to Stemming Pollution

A British charity trust has announced plans to buy carbon-emission credits and sit on them, hoping that the law of supply and demand will make it prohibitively expensive for companies to pollute, reports Edie News.

Pure, the trust, will purchase credits in the "carbon market," where companies trade "shares" that determine how much carbon dioxide they may legally emit. Each company is allotted so many shares and can sell them or buy more from other companies, depending on whether it pollutes more or less than its allotment.

But Pure says it will refuse to sell its shares, reducing the overall supply. In theory, that will increase the demand for, and price of, the remaining shares.

"It might be financially better for companies to reduce emissions than to buy credits. And that's what we're aiming to do," said a trustee of Pure.

This is hilarious and devious and perhaps good for humanity ALL AT ONCE.

It's not new for polluter companies to treat carbon credits as some crazy alternate currency -- it's as if dollar bills were carcinogenic, and corporate entities traded the amount of killing you they were allowed to do. Some get to kill you more, but only if others trade away or sell their ability to kill you. Of course, at any time a company can buy some Temporary Killing Dollars by paying real dollars to whatever government watchdog might or might not be looking.

It's safer, see? It protects you, the consumer.

And by "consumer" I mean "goods and services purchaser," not "air consumer." Because if you consume air, it doesn't protect you really all that well.

Anyway, the hilarious new twist is the wacky-neighbor nonprofit getting in on the action. This tactic looks more gimmicky than effective, since businesses will probably find it more economical to convince legislators to fabricate new credits rather than reduce emissions, rendering the jiggered scarcity for naught.

In the meantime though, Pure made some noise relevant to their mission, and took some Killing Dollars out of the economy for a while, at least. (I guess they're technically Killing Pounds.)