Cap and Share

FEASTA’s Climate Group promotes Cap and Share as a way of eliminating fossil fuel production, an alternative to carbon taxes that rely solely on price as the principal way to reduce emissions. It has two basic premises: firstly, that to stop runaway climate change, we need to cap, or limit, our carbon emissions at the source of extraction or import, and secondly, that any money generated by the sale of permits for extracting or importing fossil fuels should be shared equally by the population.

In August 2023 a new, global Cap and Share Climate Alliance was launched by a group of partner organisations including Feasta, Equal Right, The Future We Need, DR Climate Change Network, Autonomy, Global Redistribution Advocates and the Abel Musumali Foundation. If you’d like to find out more about the Alliance or if your organisation is interested in joining, please go here.

Cap and Share was mentioned in the 2022 IPCC II Working Group report on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (Chapter 1, p67), in the context of climate mitigation measures that do not assume a need for continual economic growth and that seek to minimise reliance on as-yet-undiscovered negative emissions technologies.

Cap and Share has its own dedicated website here. A sister website for the CapGlobalCarbon initiative, which places Cap and Share in a global context, is at www.capglobalcarbon.org.

Cap and Share is the focus of our publication Sharing for Survival: Restoring the Climate, the Commons and Society, which includes chapters on the commons, policy packages that would be needed alongside Cap and Share, the logistics of managing the share on a global level and how governance could be handled.

Below you’ll find an archive of Feasta blog articles and Feasta submissions that include Cap and Share.

Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements competition

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is running a competition to design “a complete climate policy framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in the post-2012 period.” Cap and Share could fit the bill very well. Entries are due by July 1 and there are an unspecified number of $3000 prizes. If you’re interested and have some time to spare to help promote Cap and Share, please read more.…

Cap and Share – A fair way to cut greenhouse emissions

Drastic cuts in the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are required to avoid a climate catastrophe. A worldwide agreement to secure such cuts will be impossible to negotiate unless both the pain and the benefits are shared equitably around the world. Moreover, the sharing system must be robust enough to ensure that the cuts agreed actually happen. Cap & Share is both robust and equitable. It has the additional advantage that, until it is adopted globally, it can be used by individual countries to make sure their emissions take a downward path. This 32 page Feasta booklet explains how C&S could …

Cap and Share: Phase 1; policy options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions Interim Final Report

This 106-page report was commissioned by Comhar, the Irish Sustainable Development Council, from the British consultancy AEA Energy and Environment. It discusses how Cap and Share could be used at a national level to control Ireland’s greenhouse emissions. It is very favourable to Cap and Share and shows that it is superior to a carbon tax. Printed copies are available for €25 postpaid from the Feasta office or can be downloaded here.…

Will Howard: a tribute by Brian Davey

Will had his own way of learning that he had a terminal illness – he wasn’t going to give up. He was going to fight it. He was going to live as long as he could because he had campaigning to do. He continued fighting his illness so that he could keep campaigning right to the last. The last time I spoke to him he told me that the chemotherapy had not gone well – and then he asked me in a weak voice whether there were any urgent decisions to be made in our Cap and Share work.

Most …

Obituary: Will Howard (1951-2008)

Will Howard setting off on his cycle ride to Brussels in 2007 to promote Cap and Share.

Will was born in Cambridge on 14th December 1951. His father, Dr Harold Howard, was Deputy Director at the Plant Breeding Institute there, and bred potatoes to be resilient to various insects. The story goes that he was working on two varieties of potatoes and came home and asked his family for names.…