The Tierra Solution: Solving Climate Change through Monetary Transformation

The Tierra Solution: Monetary Transformation, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development. Copyright © 2012 by Frans Verhagen. Foreword copyright © 2012 by Felix Dodds. Published in 2012 by Cosimo Books.

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Selective Bibliography

Endnotes

About the Author

FOREWORD

NGOS HAVE TRADITIONALLY been unhappy about discussing economics, feeling safer in the world of such issues as climate change, poverty, human rights, and biodiversity. However, with the agreement that the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012) would address the green economy in the context of poverty eradication and sustainable development, this has opened up the need for NGos to come forward with their thoughts on the economy and monetary issues.

It is clear that over the last twenty years, our banks and financial institutions have been partying. The parallels of the ecological problems with the financial crisis are clear: the banks and financial institutions privatized the gains and socialized the losses.

An example of the cost of the irresponsibility is Iceland, where the action of a few bankers has left a debt that amounts to $330,000 for every man, woman, and child in Iceland, and I am sure they are thinking why should we pay? This situation was caused by the lack of regulation and the monetary policies which were and are still being pursued—policies that benefit the few and have no justice for the rest—the 99%.

We are doing the same with the planet’s natural capital. According to the world wildlife Fund, we are operating at 25% above the biological capacity to support life—and that is before adding another billion people by 2020.

This book is an important contribution because it provides some serious ideas for how we can ensure that there is international monetary justice that takes account of social, environmental, and procedural justice and intergenerational principles in the international monetary system. The suggestions of the creation of a carbon monetary standard and a global central bank will ensure far greater stability than the present dysfunctional international monetary system, with its fluctuating exchange rates, its global financial imbalances in the nations’ balance of payments, its currency disputes, and (last but not least) its expensive and unnecessary global reserve system.

I believe we trusted our institutions to oversee a system that was fair and balanced. Instead, a trickle that would reattribute a trickle-down process has become a flood upwards to the rich, and the disparities are now obscene between those who have benefited over the last twenty years and those who haven’t. Consider this statement from Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute:

Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with . . . the economic crisis that began in 2007-2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from the past decades—a period in which most economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth was necessary and also possible to achieve. There are now no fundamental barriers to ongoing economic expansion and the world is colliding with those barriers.

Similarly, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in November 2011, Maurice Strong said he could imagine a class-action lawsuit against countries that are polluting our planet with greenhouse gases. Principles 21 and 22 of the Stockholm Declaration do not allow countries to pollute beyond their national boundaries without legal address. Such an approach will be fought every millimeter, but just as we need monetary justice, we need climate justice.

The institutions that we have created after the Second world war—i.e., the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of International Settlements, The world Bank, and The world Trade organization—set monetary rules for us. They are controlled by the developed countries, and they need fundamental reform—not merely the small changes that the present crisis has forced them to accept.

In this book, Frans Verhagen suggests a system of three transformational changes that deserve serious consideration. one is a financial system that is credit-based rather than debt-based and that would be democratically governed by a Global Central Bank. Another is a banking system that does not enjoy the privilege of money creation by way of the fractional reserve system. And most important, Verhagen suggests a carbon-based monetary standard, with the Tierra as the unit of account that would be set to a specific ton of Co2e per person, determined by the GHG emission targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Clearly, NGos are at last starting to think that if we can change the drivers in the economy, then maybe—just maybe—we can find a way to live fairly and equitably on this planet. whatever happens in Rio, we have to change the way we are living on this planet. Robert kennedy was right when he said in 1968:

a revolution is coming, a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough—But a revolution is coming whether we will it or not. we can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.

—Felix Dodds,

Executive Director,

Stakeholder Forum

ABREVIATIONS AND

ACRONYMS

ALBA countries—Bolivia, ecuador, Venezuela, Cuba

ASEAN—Association of South East Asian Nations

AWGLCA—Ad Hoc working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, part of UNFCCC

AWGKP—Ad Hoc working Group of the kyoto Protocol, part of the UNFCCC

AMI—American Monetary Institute

BIS—Bank of International Settlements

BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa

BW—Bretton woods U.N. Monetary Conference in 1944

CBA—Cost-benefit analysis

CBMS—Carbon-based monetary standard

CDM—Clean Development Mechanism, an offset mechanism in the kyoto Protocol

CoNGo—Conference of NGOs working with the United Nations

COP—Conference of Parties, signatories to the UNFCCC

CSD—U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development

CSF—Contextual sustainability framework

CSOs—Civil Society organizations, modern term for NGos

DPI—Department of Public Information at the United Nations

ECB—European Central Bank

ECOSOC—Economic and Social Council, one of the main organs of the United Nations

EMU—European Monetary Union

EPI—Environmental Performance Index of Yale and Columbia Universities

FD—Fee & Dividend

FIRE—Finance, Insurance and Real estate corporations

FSB—Financial Stability Board, successor of the Financial Stability Forum, program of the BIS

GA—General Assembly of the United Nations

G3—Global Governance Group, established as ‘pressure-group’ to render the G20 process more consultative, inclusive and transparent.

G7—The major industrialized Nations (G8 includes Russia)

G14—Mostly developing nations

G20—G8 and 12 large economies, including the BRICS

GCB—Global Central Bank

GHGs—Greenhouse Gases

GtC—Giga tons of Co2 or Co2e(quivalent)

ICLEI—International Council for Local environmental Initiatives, renamed International Council for Sustainability

ICU—International Clearing Union, proposed by keynes at the Bw Conference

IIMT—International Institute for Monetary Transformation

ILO—International Labor organization

IMCU—International Monetary Clearing Union, proposed by Paul Davidson

IMF—International Monetary Fund

IPCC—International Panel on Climate Change

KP—Kyoto Protocol, part of the UNFCCC

MEAs—Multilateral environmental agreements, some 500 in existence

MOB—Conference of the members of the kyoto Protocol

NGOs—Non-governmental organizations working with the United Nations

SCD—Sustainable Communities Development model, part of the CS Framework

SDRs—Special Drawing Rights

TBTFs—Too Big to Fail financial companies

TSN—Tierra Solution

TFD—Tierra Fee & Dividend global governance system

UNCTAD—United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNDESA—United Nations Department of economic and Social Affairs

UNITAR—United Nations Institute for Training and Research

UNFCCC—United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

WB—World Bank or International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

WTO—World Trade organization

INTRODUCTION

"Taking a range of views from the conventional to the cutting-edge, we can foresee four outcomes on prospect for the dollar—call them the Four Horsemen of the Dollar Apocalypse. In order of disruptive potential from smallest to greatest, they are: multiple reserve currencies, special drawing rights, gold, and chaos."

—JAMES RICKARDS, 2011

FOR JAMES RICKARDS, an investment banker and risk manager with more than thirty years of experience in capital markets, the fate of the dollar equals the fate of the international monetary system. For him, the dollar represents the pivotal currency in the last hundred years, and the wars around the dollar become currency wars. The outcome of the most recent currency war will determine the fate of the monetary system as a whole. In his 2011 book Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, Rickards draws on the history of two earlier currency wars (the first one during the Interwar period, and the second from 1968 to 1987) to come to the above conclusion of the Four Horsemen for the present currency war that started in 2010. His accolades, particularly from retired military personnel (he advised the Defense Department about financial war games) show how his views have deep roots in the thinking of a large, particularly Republican, portion of the American population and the U.S. Tea Party.¹

His conclusion is that America, more or less unilaterally, should return to the gold standard—not the pure or historical gold standard, but a flexible gold standard. I agree that we need to have a monetary standard, but one that is very different from his Republican gold standard. The departing point of that monetary standard does not take the dollar as the focus of the world’s monetary future, but the needs of the international monetary system as a whole.

As a matter of fact, this book goes beyond solely finding the best monetary standard. It proposes a solution—The Tierra Solution—by integrating three major global problems:

1. an ineffective international monetary system,

2. an ever-increasing danger of catastrophic climate change,

3. and an ineffective international development model that is anchored in global systems that enrich the few, impoverish the many, and imperil the planet.

The heart and soul of this solution is a carbon standard-based international monetary system that would combat climate change and advance low carbon and climate-resilient development. This solution is a far cry from Rickards’ solution of a flexible gold standard that does not consider the international political context, let alone the century’s major challenges of the climate crisis and sustainable development.

This book is important because it contributes to a discussion of real alternatives to the present world (dis)order by focusing on an integrated solution to three of its major causes. I decided to write this book because I believe that this integrated solution offers a pathway out of the current unjust, unsustainable, and unstable world (dis)order. The pathway is not an easy or obvious one because it entails a transformation of the world’s most basic system—i.e., its monetary system, which functions as the glue and lubricant of the financial, economic, and commercial systems.²However, by transforming that system, the other systems will have to change, too.

Once I decided (in the fall of 2008) that I would find an answer to the causes of the financial crisis and ways to prevent another one, it took me some three years of intensive study and reflection to write this book. I felt responsible to pursue this course because I consider myself a privileged person who has enjoyed some two dozen years of formal education in divinity, international affairs, and the sociology of international development. In the process of working on this book, I focused particularly on the history and the present shortcomings of the international monetary system because for many decades I, as a sustainability sociologist, had been involved in international development and the climate issue, issues I was familiar with.

This book is mostly written for the general public because a broad-based movement is required to make the Great Monetary Transformation involved in The Tierra Solution a reality. However, the book’s general argument is also geared to the thinking of economists and other social scientists, international development and climate specialists and, last but not least, government officials, U.N. personnel, and business leaders. (It is with them in mind that I have included a critical apparatus of more than 400 endnotes, which provide the source of my references and other relevant information.) The adoption of a carbon-based international monetary system would lead to the requirement for leaders in government, business, and civil society to base their strategic planning on this monetary transformation, given that it would constitute the essence of a global governance system.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

Proposing a global governance system that is transformational rather than reformist demands a substantial presentation of the background that would show how the proposed global governance system is different from the present one. Thus, the book is divided in two parts: Part I provides the background (in Chapters 1–6), and Part II looks at the future (in Chapters 7–10).

Chapter 1 describes the climate issue and the need for climate justice in order to make real progress. It also discusses the challenge of an equitable carbon budget, which will be a major negotiation issue both at the Durban conference in 2011 and the following UNFCCC conferences.

Chapter 2 discusses the various carbon-reduction methods and the selection of one that seems to fit best with a carbon-based international monetary system. The emphasis is placed on the criteria for the selection of the most appropriate method for the Tierra Solution: a method that is global, fast, formidable, and fair. Thus, the Fee & Dividend method is chosen above the cap-and-trade approach.

Chapter 3 considers the recent history of the international monetary system in terms of the major monetary events and trends of the last seventy years and ends with an analysis of the Great Recession of 2007–2009.

Chapter 4 covers the present monetary structure and the workings of the Questionable Quad (i.e., the International Monetary Fund, the world Bank, the world Trade organization, and the Bank of International Settlements) and points to the various monetary unions that can be building blocks of the global monetary union of the TFD system. Given that the introduction of a monetary standard removes the necessity of a global reserve system, an extensive discussion is presented about reserve currencies. The chapter concludes with the identification of eight serious shortcomings of the present international monetary system.

Two other important discussions have to take place before the proposed transformation of the international monetary system can be presented: therefore, Chapter 5 discusses the role of government in monetary and financial affairs because (at least in the U.S.), this issue divides the two main political parties, to the detriment of the common good in the U.S. and even the world. Thus, the argument will be made that banks should not engage in money creation and control; that the emergence of more public banks is a beneficial development; and that the U.S. Fed should be democratically controlled.

Chapter 6 presents the need for value-based planning, particularly the need for the value of monetary justice as the guiding principle in global governance system discussions and negotiations. This argument is made after having presented the contextual sustainability framework with the sustainability model of economics.

PART II presents the architecture of the TFD system, together with a discussion of its strategy and its prospects, keeping in mind John Maynard keynes’s acute observation about the introduction of new ideas when he said: The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones. Chapter 7 begins by outlining the monetary architecture of the TFD system, including a brief discussion of the nature of money, followed by a description of the TFD’s six monetary components. Its carbon-based monetary standard, with its unit of account—the Tierra—is described first, because it forms the heart of the new monetary paradigm. The significance of the carbon-based monetary standard is shown in the discussion of fixed (but flexible) exchange rates that would replace the volatile rates with their financial imbalances. It also is considered in the discussion of the balance of payments mechanism that now includes carbon accounts (together with traditional financial accounts). The administration of these four monetary components—the carbon-based monetary standard, carbon-based currencies, exchange rates, and the modified balance of payments mechanism—is the responsibility of the Global Central Bank’s Governing Council, which is made up of representatives of regional monetary unions. Conflicts in this monetary system are settled in a Tierra Monetary Court.

Chapter 8 clarifies the significance of the TFD system as a whole by considering its presumed impacts on the monetary, climate, financial, economic, commercial, and global governance systems. This chapter focuses on several issues in each system, showing how the TFD would resolve them or reduce their adverse impacts. Here, the potential of this new global governance system is shown in its capacity to provide the world with ample credit and liquidity, without causing sovereign debt and inflation. Thus, the challenge becomes to have the Great Monetary Transition take place. This transition would move from a costly global reserve system (based on the U.S. dollar and other reserve currencies) to a reformist system of SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) and finally to the transformational TFD global governance system.

The TFD’s two-pronged strategy and its prospects constitute the two final chapters. Chapter 9 describes the top-down strategy, where the U.N. General Assembly would pass a resolution to establish the U.N. Commission of experts on Monetary Transformation, Climate Change and Sustainable Development. Its mandate is to develop recommendations for a U.N. Framework Convention on Monetary Transformation, the Climate Crisis, and Sustainable Development, together with a Monetary Agenda for Climate and Development Action. It also describes a bottom-up strategy, consisting of national TFD working Groups that are to be part of the Global Network for Monetary Transformation (GNMT). The Network and its working groups would engage in research, education, and action. Their educational activities would consist of stimulating national debates about the connections of climate change, development, and a carbon-based international monetary system. These debates would have as a practical outcome the willingness of their government leaders to sponsor the above U.N. General Assembly Resolution and/or engage in serious consideration of the TFD as a post-kyoto or post-Rio 2012 global governance candidate.

Chapter 10 describes the prospects for the Tierra system. It describes the rationale for the TFD, objections to the TFD, and responses to those objections. It also discusses three promising trends: monetary developments in 2011; the growing assertiveness of BRICS and developing countries; and the increased effectiveness of civil society in global affairs.

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS BOOK

The best way to read and profit from this book depends on your particular background relative to the three major challenges being presented as elements of the integrated Tierra Solution. If you’re well-versed in climate issues—particularly, issues of climate justice and an equitable carbon budget—you can probably skip Chapters 1 and 2. If you’re well-versed in the history and the present structure and process of the international monetary system, you can probably skim Chapters 3 and 4. However, I recommend that everyone read Chapters 5 and 6, in order to fully understand the philosophy behind the main components of the Tierra global monetary system, its applications, its strategies, and its prospects. For all readers, consider yourself to be going on a transformational journey of great importance for yourself, your family, your nation, and your world!

In his 2011 book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, Bill Mckibben states that he believes humans have created a new planet eaarth by carbonizing the present earth out of existence. Reviewer Paul Greenberg (in The New York Times Book Review of May 9, 2010) commented that absent some overarching authority, eaarth itself will be an ecological Lenin, a harsh environmental dictator that will force us to bend to new rules. I submit that the proposed Tierra Fee & Dividend global governance system—with its carbon-based monetary standard, its modified balance of payments, and particularly its Global Central Bank—can be a candidate for that overarching global governance authority or game change that is needed to overcome the dire predicament of eaarth.

PART I

BACKGROUND:

The climate crisis,

methods of carbon reduction,

The international monetary system:

recent history and present structure and process,

value-based planning and monetary justice

CHAPTER 1

UNDERSTANDING THE

CLIMATE CRISIS

"The wealth of rich countries is built on ecological debt.

The worst ecological debt is the carbon debt

and its consequence of global warming."

—ANDREW SIMMS

FOR THE 21ST century, the climate crisis is not only a major problem and challenge, it is also an unparalleled opportunity.³ Al Gore has written and spoken extensively on the subject, and he believes the climate crisis has presented the world with the opportunity to finally and effectively address many persistent causes of suffering and misery that long have been neglected, and to transform the prospects of future generations, giving them a chance to live healthier, more prosperous lives as they continue their pursuit of happiness. In Gore’s view, the collective decision that we now face is to make the rescue of civilization the central organizing principle of our politics, economics, and social action.⁴

Gore’s solution is to make the world’s use of energy sustainable by using renewable energy technologies, which would not only solve the climate crisis but also revitalize economies and increase security. The Tierra Fee & Dividend (TFD) global governance system described in this book shows how this sustainable use of energy can be strengthened by utilizing a carbon-based international monetary system, which would push nations to decarbonize their societies because the value of their currencies would be determined by their proximity to the monetary system’s carbon standard. The proposed international monetary system would thus combat the climate crisis by advancing low carbon and climate-resilient development.

The TFD global governance system is based on the central value of climate justice and its notions of historical ecological indebtedness and ecological compensation,⁵ which refer to how countries in the global North have developed their societies economically (as described so well in the opening quote to this chapter by Andrew Simms, policy director at the New economics Foundation and author of Ecological Debt: Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations). It is the acceptance of this central value of climate justice and the acknowledgement of the historical fact of a cumulative ecological indebtedness by the industrialized countries that, to a great extent, will determine the contents and the speed of a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty.

The first section of this chapter discusses financial and ecological indebtedness, followed by a review of four major dimensions of the climate crisis (physical, political, economic, and social dimensions). Next, I describe how the international community has responded to the climate crisis and why the response has been poor.

NEED TO RECOGNIZE THE FINANCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL

INDEBTEDNESS OF ALL COUNTRIES

Ecological and financial indebtedness are issues that will be with us for many decades to come. essentially, these issues boil down to the question of ‘who owes what to whom?’ Let’s first define both types of debt and then take a closer look at each, focusing on a few significant historical events (pertaining to this concept of indebtedness) that have taken place since the early 1990s.

Financial indebtedness is the monetary debt owed by countries in the South to private or public entities in countries in the North. Financial indebtedness may be diminished somewhat if reformist changes are made to the monetary, financial, and economic systems of the countries involved. However, without fundamental changes in those systems, financial indebtedness will continue to persist, which will enrich the few and impoverish the many.

Ecological indebtedness is the debt for degrading the global commons owed by the North to countries in the South. ecological indebtedness will be reinforced by the serious and long-lasting climate change that has led to the occupation of the atmosphere by 20% of the world’s population, mainly the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S.). The remaining 80% of the world’s population are the ecological creditors in the global South; they have a right to see the end to this atmospheric occupation by the global North. However, this will not happen unless all nations and their citizens accept the fact that they are simultaneously debtors and creditors:

• Nations in the North are ecological debtors and financial creditors: they have cumulatively used an inappropriate share of earth’s environmental space, but they also have a right to have their legitimate loans repaid.

• In contrast, nations in the South are ecological creditors and financial debtors: they have a right to their share of the remaining environmental space plus compensation for their lost environmental space; at the same time, they have a duty to repay their legitimate financial debts.

These ideas are described in more detail in the next sections. In sum, however, the question of ‘who owes what to whom?’ can be answered by stating that we are all in debt to one another. we are also ecologically indebted to earth, who has provided us with her resources, which we do not own. It follows that we all share a common but differentiated responsibility, requiring that we deal with our financial and ecological debt obligations according to our respective capabilities. Fortunately, all nations, including the U.S., agreed to this ethical position at the Rio earth Summit in June 1992 as it was expressed in Article 3 of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).⁶

The global North is typically financial creditors

and ecological debtors

Generally speaking, nations, corporations, and citizens in the global North are financial creditors—because of private and public capital flows to developing countries for investment purposes, budget support, climate or development programs, or for other financial purposes. To the extent that they are legitimate, these investments and loans have to be repaid. These countries, corporations, and citizens are at the same time ecological debtors because of their historic overuse of the limited atmospheric space and of other earth systems with their cycles. The exact amount of overuse and its associated compensation is a difficult issue to measure and to resolve. It is to be negotiated in a spirit of collective responsibility for the global common good, in both its social and ecological dimensions.

The transnational banking and industrial corporations that form the main drivers of the corporate globalization process generally want to maintain the status quo with the help of the neo-liberalist institutions that support them. Because of their corporate economic power, they often succeed either in having governments do their bidding or in escaping the weak ecological