In the research article, published in July in the journal Nature, the authors detailed a mechanism for controlling greenhouse gas emissions, inspired by the financial market.
By treating greenhouse gas generation as a financial debt, any company that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would incur a carbon debt and must commit to removing its emissions. This commitment is called a ‘Carbon Removal Obligation (CRO)’ and carbon debtors would have to pay interest until their debts were cleared.
The money raised in this way could be used to cover the default risks of the CROs and the potential environmental damage caused by such ‘borrowing’. This reflects the fact that carbon borrowing can lead to short-term increases in the carbon budget target temperatures of 1.5°C to 2°C targets considered reasonably safe by the researcher community. Manufacturers who generate greenhouse gases can decide how much of their CO2 emissions to compensate for now and...