Barnes, Peter, and Marc Breslow. 2000. "Pie in the Sky: The Battle for Atmospheric Scarcity Rent." Presented at "Constituting the Commons: Crafting Sustainable Commons in the New Millenium", the Eighth Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, May 31-June 4.

Abstract

"This paper has two parts. The first part describes the emergence of scarcity rent as a consequence of the limited capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon dioxide. It notes competing proposals to allocate this rent to corporate carbon emitters or to citizens on a per capita basis. The second part estimates the potential size of this scarcity rent, and the net gains and losses to different population deciles if the rent is recycled to citizens. An appendix explains the calculations."