How to Rapidly Reduce Fossil Fuel Use

The economic rebound from the COVID-19 shutdowns generated the largest ever increase in global emissions from fossil fuels in 2021—around 2 billion tons. The market has failed to guide the global economy to a fossil-fuel-free future.  Market-based approaches tend to reinforce the status quo rather than transform the structures that have created the problem in the first place.  Rather, “the cap-and-ration” approach establishes a cap that declines over time to eliminate dependency “in a way that ensures sufficiency, equity, and justice for all,” observes Stan Cox, a research fellow in ecosphere studies at the Land Institute. “These policies would include, at a minimum, careful allocation of energy among economic sectors and fair-share rationing for consumers.”  The plan the UK almost adopted more than a decade ago—Tradable Energy Quotas or TEQs—would have taken a very different approach. “It’s a national system for implementing national carbon commitments agreed by the government of that country,” Chamberlin explains.  Cox proposes a more comprehensive approach that goes beyond price controls and rationing: “a system of universal basic services that guarantees every household sufficient access to essential goods and services, including such things as public water and energy supplies, medical services, public education, and transportation, good quality food, affordable housing, green space, clean air, and public safety without repression. There would be some guarantee that people, no matter what their income, would have access. Could all of this be feasible? Yes, by focusing energy supplies on essential goods and services rather than on wasteful, solely-for-profit production. It would also mean the sacrificing of growth for growth’s sake.”