Are you there, Kevin? Sorry mate, I couldn’t get to Canberra because it was school holidays and I promised to take the family to see friends down south. I hope it’s not too late to contribute though. I’ve written my name on a piece of cardboard and hung it around my neck, so I’m into the swing of things.

Topsoil didn’t get much attention at the 2020 conference. In fact, it rated not a single mention as far as I could see from the press reports. Quite strange really when you think about it. Australia is, of course, the sum total of all of us, grand plans and all; but at the simplest level it is the land under our feet.

This land has been washing out to sea at an alarming rate since the Union Jack was first stuck in it, a mere 220 years ago. Since the introduction of European farming methods, the Australian landscape of sustainable wetlands has been tragically transformed into a drainage system.

Water allocation is the biggest challenge for Australia in the twenty-first century. Our rivers are struggling to supply sufficient water to meet the needs of all the competing users along the way. Increasingly, we are resorting to drawing more water from the ancient underground aquifers. This water is not a renewable resource, at least not in the short term.
So there you go, Kev. Water is my number one priority and carbon emission is the number two.

What about the introduction of a carbon card? I didn’t see anything in the 2020 recommendations about that. Achieving a reduction in emissions for a high polluting mob, as we are, will require substantial change to our way of life. A trail of carrot over a number of years will work better than a sudden whack of stick.

Reward points are a proven and popular way for people to earn credit by following a pattern, usually by spending at certain places. Because it’s painless and voluntary, it would work well as an emissions reduction strategy.

Everybody would want a carbon card once the system was up and running. You could get carbon credit points at the supermarket checkout for choosing local produce over highly transported food. Or CC points at the servo for being the registered owner of a fuel-efficient vehicle. Points for using public transport perhaps, or free public transport for CC-ers who had sufficient credit.

It could be that flying would require passengers to have CC points; and that some would be used to pay for the environmental cost of jet engines. Reducing unnecessary flights would result in people accumulating ‘infrequent flyer points’, a more sensible system when you think about it.

The government would have the responsibility for deciding how CC points could best be redeemed. It would be able to nudge the economy towards pollution reducing outcomes with less need for heavy regulation.

The Carbon Credit Card would be a smart card just as the new bank and credit cards are expected to be. Smart is not a problem these days. Information storage, retrieval and cross-collation is coming to a bank or credit card company near you.

If all this new technology can be used to sell more stuff, surely it is just as smart, perhaps even smarter, to use it to save the planet.