Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism
Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism – Review
Who Owns the Sky presented a very grand plan for secretly conserving the atmosphere. In this book Peter Barnes appeared at earth’s atmosphere as a important commodity that everyone owns. In many ways this argument became sense. Everyone uses air, so everyone should consider it important. Barnes described many reasons why too much carbon secretion is deeply disturbing the climate, not to mention the life on earth. If we need fresh air to maintain quality life then the people infecting the air should pay for their damage. Writing in a time led by capitalism, it was not far fetched to associate environmental toll on a environmental resource to a fiscal tax being placed on polluters. All humans and extra life requires air therefore there is already a real sense that one should protect something that is vital to life. Barnes commonly used the company of air as public property to all to be guarded with expensive fines for those who threaten that property. This will convince non-conservationists that the atmosphere is a resource that is valuable. What is the Sky Trust? The Sky Trust is Barnes’ financial investment system that sells rights to polluters and distributes the revenue to all citizens equally. This is one type of cap-and-trade system that will best relate the energy companies responsible for pollution with the government and its citizens. Shareholders are all equal. All citizens are shareholders. Shares are not transferable. The Sky Trust will be a transparent pseudo common fund in which all shareholders will see where every dollar becomes. The Sky Trust will affect consumers according to how much impact they have on the atmosphere. This will be measured in the quantity of energy a consumer makes from carbon slowly burning sources. The tax highly paid by the energy companies to the Sky Trust will be transferred to the consumer. This means the people currently driving SUV’s will have to pay further because they want to buy further fuel to run their vehicle. There are some important questions that some people have about how the Sky Trust would work. My first one really happens to be the name of this book. Who is to say that the voters of the United States own the sky? Sky is property of commons, in order to ration does some form of ownership means to take place? Why now? What is an accurate monetary value to some vast place of gas? What will the effects be on the U.S. and Global economy? When the additional rate of the Sky Trust tax is successfully passed onto the consumer who will be eventually left out and what businesses will die? Entering all the additional charges onto every good and service might collapse the economy. Barnes does have a working case of his plan, in the Alaskan Permanent fund. This program demonstrated me that there could be beneficial effects to government-organized sale of environmental resources. The idea to create an investment portfolio that will outlive the environmental resource, while at the same time becoming the most money for a scarce resource to discourage overuse is very positive. The certain results of the Alaskan Permanent Fund also apply to the Sky Trust. If Sky Trust money is originally entitled to the citizens of the U.S. then they can decide how they need to spend this additional money. Families will benefit from the tax advantages and an opportunity to start a savings because it will provide opportunities that would not be possible before. Parents that are trying to save for their children’s college education will be able to give their next generation more of a chance for social and financial advancement than they had. Entrepreneurs will be able to have the capital it needs to get a small business off the finely ground. I really like the idea that Barnes advances that sustainable business is possible. He eventually talked about constantly changing the DNA of business to be more socially conscious. Business should view providing back to the community as crucial to the business cycle. It is simple for businesses to make small charitable contributions but it is quite another thing to factor in the effects to the community and the environment on level terms with the dollars and cents of the bottom line. I like the ideas in Who Owns the Sky, but I question the feasibility. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in ways of constantly changing the foundations of society to preserve the world’s riches while effectively creating communal harmony