Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism [Hardcover]

Peter Barnes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1559638540 | ISBN-13: 978-1559638548 | Publication Date: May 1, 2001 | Edition: 1

One way or another, global warming will force us to put a price on the deposition of carbon in the atmosphere. This work offers a proposition for a new market institution that will equitably distribute the pain and benefits of a price on carbon. It proposes an institution known as the "Sky Trust", the fundamental premise of which is that the price paid for carbon emission ought to be paid to the owners of the atmosphere - all of us, who own it collectively as a commons. The author then examines the extent to which such an institution could be designed to conserve and distribute the benefits of other commons to which we are all heir.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barnes (The People's Land), cofounder and former president of the "socially responsible" financial services company Working Assets, argues that natural resource management urgently needs rethinking, since the atmosphere's capacity for absorbing carbon gas emissions is severely tested every day. While not an alarmist, he cites recent statistics (e.g., between 1923 and 1991, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air grew from 298 to 355 parts per million, and the earth's average surface temperature rose from 57.4 to 58.0 F) and insists that we need new solutions. In Barnes's view, the problem is that we view the sky and other natural resources as free and thus use them as if they're unlimited. Moving beyond what he regards as standard eco-hand-wringing, Barnes discusses the successes of cap-and-trade systems in reducing emissions of sulfur, lead and other pollutants, and proposes a similar market-based approach for carbon dioxide. Barnes's system of pricing permits is modeled in part on Alaska's plan, in which oil companies that drill in the state make payments that are distributed to Alaska residents through a dividend-producing trust. He likewise proposes that the revenues from emissions-permit sales should go to the public, with each citizen receiving an equal monetary share. In this very brief and disappointingly thin sketch of his system (he leaves the nuts and bolts to others), Barnes frequently sounds as if he's making a repetitive sales pitch. Skeptics on both the left (who may not buy his free-market solutions) and the right (who may object to yet another tax on business) are unlikely to be moved by this book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In 1985 Barnes cofounded Working Assets, a long-distance telephone service provider that sets aside a portion of each customer's bill to donate to social and environmental causes. He now proposes a market-based solution to the problem of atmospheric pollution. A nongovernmental institution called the Sky Trust would set limits on carbon emissions and charge companies for the "right" to pollute. In much the same way that Alaskan residents receive "dividends" from income earned on the state's oil leases, citizens would collect money paid to the Sky Trust by polluters. Money from the trust would also be used to balance the effects of higher fuel prices. Barnes meticulously documents why the earth's atmosphere is invaluable, and he catalogs the damaging effects of carbon dioxide emissions before detailing how the Sky Trust would operate. He compares the sky to pastures or woodlands historically used collectively by commoners and considers how the principles behind the Sky Trust might be applied to other so-called commons or societal assets such as biodiversity, the airwaves, and quietude. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559638540
• ISBN-13: 978-1559638548
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #679,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in NYC and spent first 26 years on east coast. Newsweek sent me to San Francisco in 1968. Soon left Newsweek but never the Bay Area. West Coast correspondent for The New Republic, 1970-1976. Worked in Eugene McCarthy and Fred Harris presidential campaigns. Started worker-owned solar energy business in 1976, served on board of National Cooperative Bank, promoted worker ownership. Co-founded Working Assets in 1982, retired in 1995. Founded Mesa Refuge, a writer's retreat in Point Reyes Station. Co-founded Tomales Bay Institute, which reinvents the commons. Two sons, Zack and Eli.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Visionary book, September 8, 2001

By 

Michael Z. Castleman (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism (Hardcover)

Who Owns the Sky is an excellent, very thought-provoking book. It raises deep enviromental issues, explains some complicated concepts quite elegantly, and then proposes a solution nothing short of brilliant. The book is very well written and beautifully reasoned. I particularly like the fact that it crosses all political lines. It's neither liberal nor conservative. Rather, it goes beyond both. Very 21st century. It's a whole new vision. Barnes is a visionary.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A populist, and realist, just transition proposal!, June 22, 2001

By 

Tom Athanasiou (Albany, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism (Hardcover)

I hate to disagree with the experts at the esteemed Publisher's Weekly, but Who Owns the Sky is an important book. It puts forward a very interesting transition proposal -- a Sky Trust -- based on the notion of per-capita rights to the earth's resources. Further, the Sky Trust may promise a way to manage the US's carbon emissions in a reasonably equitable manner, while at the same time providing enough money for a substantive "just transition" fund to help greenhouse losers like the coal miners.

In other words, there is some actual new thinking here, which the weary experts at PW seem too expert to recognise

The idea, in a nutshell, is that instead of grandfathering "the sky" away to, say, the corporations that already, in effect, squat it, emission permits would be auctioned, with the revenues going into a trust. Then, each year, 25% of the money would go to the transition fund, and each citizen would get a check (about $644 a year, in 2010, if carbon emission permits are $25 a ton) much as the citizens of Alaska get checks from the Alaska Permanent Trust, which is funded by mining and drilling royalties.

One point to remember, here, is that mining and drilling are *very* popular in Alaska.

There are problems, which I, being to the left of Barnes, am indeed bothered by. The "citizen" bit, for instance. And in my view Barnes takes too narrow of view of the transition problem, and is certainly wrong in thinking that a transition fund could or should be soon phased out. And there are a few others too, but I won't bother you with them just now. The important thing is that this is an important proposal, and that it has some political traction, which is particularly amazing given that it prominantly features the notion of per capita rights. It deserves, along with a few other currently emerging and more traditionally "progressive" ideas for just transition plans, be taken very seriously.

Of course that would require us to be able to recognize an new idea when we see it. Don't look to Publisher's Weekly for help here.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Way Out For George Bush ?, October 23, 2001

By 

Chris Rose - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Owns the Sky?: Our Common Assets And The Future Of Capitalism (Hardcover)

Review of ‘Who Owns The Sky’ by Peter Barnes pub Island Press 2001

Chris Rose

This is a great little book that should be read by any environmentalist who really wants to save the atmosphere. Original and iconoclastic, its main fault is that it is so packed with big and new ideas so that it is in danger of being overlooked as too complicated.

Really it should be called ‘Let’s Own The Sky’ as it’s a rationale and rallying cry to take the common asset of the sky into common (as distinct from state) ownership. Barnes suggests a way to get Americans (or anyone) to take a stake in the sky as a waste disposal resource, and then charge for polluting it. Americans want to protect the climate says Barnes, but only if they can do so without any economic pain. Done right, via a ‘sky trust,’ Barnes says, would be a money-earner for most. Result – incentives to pollute less.

In the Barnes plan a Sky Trust would be funded by emission permits sold to energy companies at the top of the ‘carbon chain.’ The revenues would be paid out to citizens in equal dividends, like the Alaska Permanent Fund does with that State’s oil revenues.

Barnes is an entrepreneur with impeccable capitalist if Californian credentials. He has proposed a cap-and-trade system which charges polluters rather than handing out emission rights for nothing. As such it might appeal to less-government libertarians and egalitarian environmentalists alike.

...and you can get a notional non-transfer-able share of America’s sky. Barnes has a blueprint but is it a Bushprint ? Where else though is George Bush to go if he is to regain any credibility on the climate, after rashly rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, the climate treaty accepted by every other nation ? America needs some fresh thinking and this might be it.