How One Person Can Solve Climate Change
If reducing carbon was profitable, would the climate crisis still be a crisis?
So, I wrote an extensive intro to this article on how the various methods of addressing climate change rely on government or large corporations, but you already know that. I wrote about how they are failing, but that is unmistakable. I wanted to remind people of the consequences of failure, but the effects have been known for decades. If you’re reading this, you probably already agree that society has failed — badly — at meeting this challenge. Let’s not rehash the banal. This article is about the one approach we all know doesn’t work — focusing on the individual. It’s a long read but worth it. So let’s skip the fluff and get into it…
The Problem
For an existential crisis, climate change is a curious beast. On an individual level, it’s pretty cheap to mitigate. It has been estimated to cost roughly $2 per week per person to reduce our CO2 output to the levels specified by the Paris Accord. Of course, once we multiply this number across society, the cost becomes staggering — we are talking about nearly $1trillion each year.
Instead of focusing society-wide, can we solve this problem at the individual level? What if we could raise $2 weekly for one person? We already know people will reject this cost if imposed on them, so what if we could do this purely by optimizing assets they already have? Making the solution costless removes the objections, but we still have one significant block. Some people will doubtless join, but most will not bother, believing their contribution to climate change is irrelevant and so too the reduction. We have to go a step further and provide an incentive for individuals to choose to join.
For individual action to matter, it can’t actually be individual. It has to be society-wide. This could only be achieved if people were paid to reduce their carbon footprint. Is this possible? The answer, with some caveats, is yes.
How?
TheCoin is a non-profit with the singular goal of raising this $2. We have created a unique financial service that is both costless and gives sufficient incentive to individuals to join. Much like AirBnB generates income from your house when you’re not using it, we generate income from the money you have sitting around, right up until you spend it. Most of the revenue goes to you as an incentive to join. A small percentage purchases carbon offsets to reduce your footprint. It’s profitable for you to reduce your CO2 footprint.
How does it work?
We have created a micro-investing service to generate income from small amounts of cash. We designed it to be transparent to your life — you don’t need extra savings or to change your lifestyle. The service pairs with your existing credit card, and as you do your daily spending we automatically transfer the amount spent from your checking account into our custom-built investment account. When the card’s balance is due, we automatically pay it in full. The small amounts earned by the investments during this period can be transferred out or stay invested in TheCoin and keep growing.
What could go wrong?
Every investment carries risk, so we have created a way to protect your balance. Each account can optionally allocate some of its profits to purchase protection. Unlike most forms of insurance, we have designed this option to have no up-front cost. This zero-cost approach allows anyone to join without fear of loss.
What does this mean for me?
It means more money in your pocket. While the balance invested — and the returns earned — are low by most standards, its true power comes from the amount of time invested. You won’t make much investing $1000 for a month, but then next month the process repeats. And next year. Imagine how much that would grow if invested for 5, 15 or 45 years. The power of exponential growth means lifetime earnings in the hundreds of thousands for most people.
However, the value of this product does not come from its returns. Its true value comes from its ease of use. From start to finish, we designed this project to cost you nothing. Once sign-up is complete, you continue life as usual. The only differences are that you have reduced your carbon footprint, your credit card is always paid on time, and you can take a free vacation every five years or so.
How does it help climate change?
We rely on personal returns to attract clients, but our mission is to reduce carbon emissions. Our investments also pay dividends that we use to purchase carbon offsets from GoldStandard.org. We are budgeting a little over $14USD per tonne of CO2 offset. While there are cheaper alternatives, GoldStandard requires the highest standards to ensure that we have the impact we need to have. We estimate that an average account will reduce the individual’s carbon footprint by nearly a third — enough to align with the Paris Accord.
What does this mean?
The problem with climate change isn’t denial. When we hear it said, “Solutions exist to Climate Change if we can find the will,” this means “if we will pay for them.” TheCoin aims to fill this gap. We fund clean energy projects, pay to protect forests, and support sustainable farming. We make real-world investments to bridge the gap between the dirty coal power that people need and the clean energy they want.
Will one person really make a difference?
A good analogy for this is a vaccine. Vaccination is the solution for a global pandemic not because it prevents you from getting sick but because it prevents the disease from spreading. Personal protection is the incentive, but society benefits because this individual no longer contributes to the problem.
This is our project’s core difference. As long as a person remains a client, they continue to earn while we offset their footprint today, tomorrow, next year, and next decade.
The fight against climate change will continue far into the future. The effort must survive recessions and booms, governmental change and generational shifts. A solution rooted in self-interest will continue long after altruism or imposed sacrifice has been exhausted.
How will this project scale?
We can’t grow fast enough to dent the world’s emissions. We accepted this simple fact and designed the project to compensate. We incorporated as a non-profit specifically to give our product away. All of our processes are permissionless. All of our technology is open-source. TheCoin doesn’t require corporate partnerships or millions of dollars of startup capital. Anyone who wants to can duplicate this project. We will actively support anyone aligned with our mission.
We hope that others will follow once we have proven the concept.
Climate change is so big (and you're so small)?
We believe we have answered a fundamental issue in Climate Change. If you consider the difficulty of persuading someone to give up meat or accept free money, which is easier? Deciding between an EV or a legacy vehicle often comes down to price, but there is no barrier to TheCoin. Politics are essential, but liberal die-hards and true-blue conservatives are equally happy members of TheCoin.
Yes, we are a tiny operation. Yes, the problem is global. We can’t pick up billionaire investors or name-brand reconition, because we won’t make anyone rich. That is not what matters. If the project works as advertised, then the only question we need to answer is:
If you could earn money for reducing your carbon footprint, would you do it? Would you tell your friends?
Your answer to this question is what decides whether or not we can succeed.
The problem is, of course, that this is only a conceptual solution. Our goal was to prove it is possible, and we have. However, now the hard part starts. A vaccine that nobody hears about or believes in is irrelevant.
But what about…
There are objections, though. Here is a list of the ones I hear frequently:
This couldn’t possibly work!
It already does.
How do I know this isn’t a scam?
In general, scams work by selling a promise of something that doesn’t exist. That’s because it is pretty expensive to build something like this. A scammer who creates a product only to torch it hasn’t worked out their cost/benefit very well.
However, if it helps, I’d suggest joining our email list and watching the project for a year or so. Climate change is the long game. You can afford to wait and let us prove ourselves.
Carbon Offsets Are Bullshit!
Carbon Offsets are an unregulated financial instrument. Anyone who invested through the Great Financial Crisis knows how dangerous that can be! When we started this project, we spent months sifting through the different markets, trying to figure out how we could be confident our offsets were effective. In the end, we have the following three guidelines:
1) Only purchase from Gold Standard. The WWF backs this organization, and they verify their offsets. These reasons are why the Suzuki Foundation recommends them.
2) No tree planting. These types of offsets are notorious for abuse. Even when they are valid, tree-planting, at best, only treats the symptom.
3) Where possible, fund clean energy. Solving climate change means stopping burning fossil fuels. We can make this happen by making fossil fuels unprofitable — and subsidizing clean energy is the most direct way to achieve this.
However, the major flaw to this objection is that it conflates the way corporations buy cheap offsets to greenwash their activities with the offsets themselves. This kind of action is inevitable when for-profit companies simply purchase offsets for their marketing department. It makes no difference in those circumstances how effective the offsets are, as that doesn’t change the company's outcome.
This is not what we do. We are not trading emissions, and we care deeply that the offsets purchased are effective. We’re open to change, though. If you, or anyone else, show us how we could better achieve our goal, then that is what we will do.
This is too good to be true!
Actually, we make less than half the return the big banks do with the same dollars. Your money is already earning a considerable amount, you just don’t see any of it.
Can’t I make this money for myself?
Theoretically, yes; in reality, no. Even apart from the enormous hassle, the slippage incurred due to trading fees and time-in-flight for your funds would mean a lower return — even without purchasing the offsets. This is before the account protection is factored in — while it’s possible to buy similar protection in a regular brokerage, it is pretty expensive and generally only practical for very large balances.
We designed this project from the ground up to be low-balance and high turnover. We do not recommend keeping your retirement savings in TheCoin!
I’m not responsible for Climate Change!
It is 100% OK if you are only in it for the money.
Nobody cares about climate change:
I don’t believe you. I think you care. I believe you want to act, but the problem is so big that anything an individual does is pointless. You’re intelligent, and it’s just not logical to make sacrifices that achieve nothing.
The question to ask yourself is — if it wasn’t a sacrifice, what would you do? If you could be paid to offset your footprint, is there any reason not to accept that?
If the answer is yes, then act. Apply to our beta — and welcome to the fight!
If the answer is no, can we expect others to do anything?
