If you’re perplexed by the “cap and dividend” policy, check out Cap’n Dividend’s Excellent Climate Solution. It’s an amusing 90-second flash animation for the Web that explains the basic logic of the “cap and dividend” policy, a leading proposal for curbing C02 emissions and global warming. Viewers are invited to send the video to their friends as part of a larger effort to inform more people about the proposal, which is gaining momentum among environmentalists, economists and Members of Congress.
As regular readers of OTC may know, the basic idea behind cap and dividend is to auction “pollution rights” to companies that sell carbon-based fuels and put the money in a trust fund owned by all citizens (because we all own the sky). Then the money is distributed in annual dividends to everyone. The auctions use market forces to discourage C02 pollution, but the trust dividends help everyone meet the higher costs of using carbon-based fuels. The system also rewards those who reduce their energy consumption.
The “Cap’n Dividend” animation was recently released by Cap and Dividend, a project of On the Commons. For more, go to http://www.capanddividend.org.