The Carbon Coin According to The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
(NY:  Orbit, 2020  ISBN 9780316300131)

page 174: For every ton of carbon not burned, or sequestered in a way that would be certified to be real for an agreed-upon time, one century being typical in these discussions so far, you are given one carbon coin. You can trade that coin immediately for another currency on the currency exchanges, so one carbon coin would be worth a certain amount of other fiat currencies. The central banks would guarantee it at a certain minimum price, they would support a floor so it couldn’t crash. But also, it could rise above that floor as people get a sense of its value, in the usual way of currencies in the currency exchange markets.

Mary said, So really this is just a form of quantitative easing.
Yes. But directed, targeted. Meaning the creation, the first spending of the new money, would have been specifically aimed at carbon reduction. That reduction is what makes the new money in the first place. The Chen papers sometimes it CQE, carbon quantitative easing….

Page 288: Mary brought them to order. She reminded them of the meetings she had had with them over the past few years, in which she had urged them to create a new currency of their own collaboration, based on carbon sequestration, and exchangeable on currency exchanges; money like other money, but backed by the central banks working together, and securitized by the creation of long-term bonds, bonds with a century pay-out at a guaranteed rate of return large enough to tempt anyone interested in fiscal stability. In essence, as she had been saying, creating a way to invest in survival, to go long on civilization, as opposed to the many ingenious way that finance had found to short civilization, thus in the process shifting most of the surplus value created in the last four decades to the richest two percent of the population, making those few so rich that they could imagine surviving the crash of civilization, they and their descendants living on into some poorly imagined gated-community post-apocalypse in which servants and food and fuel and games would still be available to them.

Page 290: … a carbon coin, a digital currency backed by a consortium of all the big central banks, with open access for more central banks to join; these coins to be backed by long-term bonds created by the consortium, and shored up against financial attacks by speculators who were sure to attack it. Defended by all the central banks working together, they would be able to repulse successfully any entities that tried to hamstring their new system. Indeed, if the central banks blockchained not just the new carbon coins but all the fiat money that existed, they could probably squeeze parastic speculators right out of existence. The best defense being a good offense.
Page 294: They would issue together a single new currency, coordinated through the BIS [Bank for International Settlements] : one coin per ton of carbon-dioxide-equivalent sequestered from the atmosphere, either by not burning what would have been burned in the ordinary course of things, or by pulling it back out of the air. They promised to establish a floor in the value of this carbon coin, which exposed them to great danger from speculators trying to scare money out of the plan; and they foretold a rise in the value of the currency over the coming decades. By doing these things trhey made this investment a sure thing, assuming civilization itself survived.

Page 294: They [a consortium of all the big central banks, with open access for more central banks to join] would issue together a single new currency, coordinated through the BIS [Bank for International Settlements]: one coin per ton of carbon-dioxide-equivalent sequestered from the atmosphere, either by not burning what would have been burned in the ordinary course of things, or by pulling it back out of the air. They promised to establish a floor in the value of this carbon coin, which exposed them to great danger from speculators trying to scare money out of the plan; and they foretold a rise in the value of the currency over the coming decades. By doing these things they made this investment a sure thing, assuming civilization itself survived.

Page 295: In fact, at the end of the agreement they all lent some fiat money of the ordinary kind, pooled into a fund administered through the BIS, which would be enough to pay for this new bureaucracy of verification that would have to be created to certify that carbon was rally being sequestered. This was a bureaucracy so vast no single bank could afford it, nor of course the ministry, not even close. It was almost a full employment plan all by itself.

Page 333: If all fiat money everywhere went digital and got recorded in blockchains, so that its location and transaction history could be traced and seen by all, then illegal tax dodges could be driven into non-existence by sanction, embargo, seizure, and erasure.

Thus it will be seen that a fully considered and vigorous tax regime, using digital trackable currencies and instituted by all the nations on Earth by way of an international treaty brokered by the UN of the World Bank or some other international organization, could quickly stimulate rapid change in behavior and in wealth distribution. Some might even call it revoutionary change.