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ClimateCoin 2015 by Dennis Peterson

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William Chu

Apr 20, 2015
05:11

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I agree that the current monetary system is incompatible with global movement towards climate change, which I think is implied by your proposal for an alternative currency. 2 main problems I think are; how are Climatecoins gained and made? And what can they buy? Personally, I think they should be gained by performing daily acts that can have a cumulative major impact, by as many people as possible. Currency should be made via democratic process and overseen by people who specialize in economics. For example, offer 1 Climatecoin for every day that a person does not consume meat. I think Climatecoins should buy products that people need, made by companies that comply with certain standards so as to be Carbon neutral, and that would hopefully also subsidize public awareness/growth/etc. I think your proposal relates closely to mine, which calls for a need for a new social media platform that places more power in the hands of the users. Please check it out if you want to discuss further. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1301417/planId/1315204

Jennifer Perron

Jun 11, 2015
02:33

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Dear Dennis, Thanks for your proposal to the Climate CoLab. I'm one of the catalysts, helping provide comments and feedback, in an effort to help strengthen proposals. Thanks for your proposal regarding the concept of ClimateCoin, a virtual currency. A few brief suggestions to supplement your proposal: A) It may be helpful to provide a brief summary of ClimateCoin, its basic concept and function in the initial portion of the summary section, and then include the background allegory about the public goods issue thereafter. B) In some sections you offer a few different ideas or possibilities of how the currency might operate. It may strengthen your proposal to select those possibilities you believe to be the strongest, and articulate them as a concrete proposal for the currency. It would help the reader to conceptualize exactly how this would operate, rather than have unknowns. C) Regarding costs, it would seem there would be administrative costs associated with the labor of maintenance of this digital currency, both on the ClimateCoin Administration side (if there were one), and on behalf of the companies involved. You may wish to reference this in your proposal. Thanks for your contributions to the CoLab!

Stevie Harison

Jun 12, 2015
04:22

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Hello from Indonesia, Good luck for your project proposal. Just review and make it completed before meet deadline tomorrow. Thank you,

Dennis Peterson

Jun 13, 2015
09:21

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Thanks jperron, I've nailed things down to one specific plan, and added the costs section. Ongoing maintenance would be extremely minimal. I couldn't figure out how to describe the system in the summary space without assuming the reader to be very knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies. Also it seems worthwhile to me to lead with the fairly amazing fact that Bitcoin solves a continuous public goods problem without coercion, something that's normally considered unsolved and perhaps unsolvable in game theory. So I left that part mostly as-is.

Vishal Bhavsar

Jun 13, 2015
11:54

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Hello, Thanks for the proposal. This concept brings individuals into the framework of incentive actions of individual. The current climate actions are all about at government or corporate level. Your proposal should bring individuals into the race of climate action. Few observations: 1. The price of carbon of 12 dollar is high. Current rates are quite low 2. Few years back there were carbon exchange like Chicago Climate Exchange. Are the models built similar framework. Regards, Vishal

Dennis Peterson

Jun 14, 2015
10:30

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Thanks Vishal. The price I found is from a dashboard showing current rates in California, but if the price ends up being lower that would increase the impact of this plan. I should probably try to find more comprehensive price information. This plan is pretty different from the Chicago exchange, which used cap-and-trade. Instead of capping emissions and asking you to pay for permits to emit, climatecoin just rewards you for buying however many voluntary offsets you wish.

Dennis Peterson

Jun 17, 2015
09:56

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I've gone ahead and created an initial implementation of Climatecoin. Project page: https://github.com/DennisBPeterson/Climatecoin Core script: https://github.com/DennisBPeterson/Climatecoin/blob/master/climatecoin.sol This script has the basic climatecoin functions. Donate ether to offsetters, get awarded climatecoins, in amounts depending on offsetter pricing and global carbon emissions. Climatecoins can be transferred between users. Global emissions, offsetter lists, and pricing can be updated by an admin So far the script relies on a central administrator, but it's set up so the admin can be replaced by other scripts implementing the collective intelligence features.

Dennis Peterson

Jun 19, 2015
07:16

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I've added script to let users vote on which carbon offsetters to authorize, with each vote weighted by the total carbon that user has paid to offset.

Dennis Peterson

Jul 10, 2015
05:39

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Many thanks to the judges for their excellent suggestions. I've made major changes to almost everything after the introduction.

Yates Buckley

Jul 12, 2015
08:17

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The proposed 12$ offset is much lower than the 40$-100$ estimated cost of a carbon capture and storage per ton for example. And I can't see how any credible impact would be achieved through offsets alone. I like the general idea but I am not clear on how the market cost of what is effective reduction of Co2 content in the atmosphere is included in this proposal. Thanks for any clarification..

Dennis Peterson

Jul 12, 2015
03:55

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Offsets can fund reforestation, cover the price difference between coal and renewables, subsidize biochar (which also produces carbon-negative fuel and in many areas improves agricultural productivity), etc. Directly paying for carbon capture and storage isn't necessarily the best way to go. $12/ton is the current market price of offsets in California, according to the source I found. (Note that in a comment above, one of the climatecolab catalysts seems to be aware of even cheaper prices.) It's possible that scaling up further would cost more per ton. It's also possible that R&D will find cheaper methods. Rather than speculate I'm just taking a current market price. If the price doubles, the direct effect of Climatecoin for a given donation will be cut in half. But I think the indirect effects on attitudes would be the same.

Dennis Peterson

Jul 15, 2015
12:18

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Thanks again to the judges. I've made extensive rewrites of the "what actions", "who", "cost", and "timeline" sections, and minor changes elsewhere.

Dennis Peterson

Jul 30, 2015
11:21

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Ethereum just launched: https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/07/30/ethereum-launches/ It will be several days before ether is traded on exchanges. Initial launch is mainly for technical users, more user-friendly software coming later.

Dennis Peterson

Aug 13, 2015
03:59

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Ethereum trading has started, current market value is about $100 million. It will probably be volatile for a while, updates available at coinmarketcap.com.

Benjamin Welborn

Jan 7, 2020
12:29

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I love this idea... actually I had the same idea, but didn't make mention of it until years after climatecoin. I'd like to add a small thought to this already comprehensive plan anyway: a physical biomass exchange. To make this really real, offer coins for biomass in a way that people see it. Like a recycling bin... and identify the companies that are making money/coins via harvesting CO2. Success stories are just like carbon sequestering companies earning coins... for burying captured carbon! The thing about success stories is the same thing about fashion models; people need to see or hear about it working before they say to themselves, gee I could do that.