CARBON CAP and TRADE
Measure your CO2 emissions and join the CAP and TRADE scheme

Carbon Cap and trade — the How, the Why and the What

How to join the carbon trading scheme

1. Go to the RSA Carbon Trading web site
2. Register, if you haven't already done so. (Icon on bottom of left hand navigation box) The process of registration will also enable you to calculate your personal carbon footprint.
3. After either registration or logging in, you get to your dashboard. Click on 'Groups' in the navigation box in the top left hand corner of the screen. This will generate a 'Group search' box at the top of the screen.
4. Type in 'climate and health council' in this box and the Climate and Health Council group (our group) will appear.
5. Select the Climate and Health Council group by clicking on it - this will get you to the group's home page or dashboard. Select 'Join Groups' in the left hand navigation box. (The 'Join Groups' icon wont appear if you are already a member of the group!)
6. Once you have entered your name in the join groups box, there are two possible outcomes:
   • you will immediately be a member of the Climate and Health Council group.
   • you may be referred to a moderator, in which case a message is sent off to the group moderator. Once approved, you will be a member of the Climate and Health Council group!
7. If you have been invited by a colleague to join, you will find your invitation under 'Group Invitees' in the left hand navigation box.
8. Once you have joined, you can start trading. The best way to start is by clicking onto 'My dashboard' in the navigation panel. This will tell you what your carbon balance is – whether in credit or debit. To start trading, click 'trading' in the left hand navigation panel.
9. If you have not already done so, don't forget to sign our pledge!

Why get involved?

Carbon cap and trade is the local manifestation of Contraction and Convergence (C&C). The climate and health council believes C&C is the most feasible present option for controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels whilst also delivering resources to give poorer countries development headroom. (see appendix 1 below). Our focus is to ensure that Contraction and Convergence replaces the Kyoto framework at the COP 15 negotiations in Copenhagen in Nov 2009. In the meantime we can pioneer a local leadership version of C&C by joining the climate and health council's demonstration carbon cap and trade group.

What is involved

The process of joining the group enables us to assess our personal carbon footprint, using the UK govt tool (There are many carbon footprint tools, each reflecting different proportions of our carbon emissions. The UK govt one concentrates on carbon emissions related to our own domestic energy use and personal travel, and is now widely used).

Using this carbon calculator, our group has determined that each member has an initial entitlement of 5 tons of CO2 /year. If you emit more than this, you will need to buy carbon from a fellow group member who emits less. For an initial period, probably three months, the transactions will be virtual. Thereafter, money generated from transactions will be used to support low carbon development in poor communities. Group members will have a say in deciding which projects to support.

Appendix 1 – Why we advocate Contraction and Convergence

The Climate and Health Council believes that health professionals can and should play a major role in helping tackle climate change whilst at the same time improving the circumstances of globally disadvantaged people in communities around the world. Its rationale is that climate change and the resource gap between rich and poor are the two factors which most impair both local and global public health. They create a vicious cycle where the impacts of climate change exacerbate the resource gap, and increasing impoverishment adds to environmental degradation. There is much evidence that the insufficiency of action being taken is leading to a public health catastrophe. To restore and improve global public health, both of these critically-related problems have to be faced up to and resolved as the mitigation of one is linked to the mitigation of the other.

Given the transboundary, indeed global nature of both sets of problems, the Council recognises the imperative of achieving an international agreement on a framework to take policy forward. In the Council's view, it must be have the following three essential ingredients if it is to be health promoting and health sustaining:

a) a scientifically-assessed and globally binding commitment to cap and reduce carbon emissions so that, over an agreed period of time, these are reduced sufficiently to ensure that atmospheric concentrations are not increased. The extent of this reduction is much debated: The current scientific consensus is that a concentration of 450 ppm of these emissions must be the limit if we wish to have a 70 % chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade. This is considered to be a tipping point beyond which run-away climate change is likely to occur. This level is the one we presently work to, but recognise it may well be too high particularly in light of the 30% risk of failure.

b) a mechanism for ensuring that, coupled to the above process, there is a transfer of resources which allows for development in those countries which have not raised their standards of living through excessive use of fossil fuels. A key feature of this transfer is the provision of resources enabling all women to get secondary education, which is recognised to be the quickest way of promoting the demographic transition to a stable population.

c) the mechanism must have a strong policy bias promoting low carbon policies as the basis for development.

The Council judges these three ingredients are built into the 'fair shares' Contraction and Convergence cap and trade framework articulated by the Global Commons Institute (www.GCI.org.uk).