Micro "Carbon-Credit"

[onewhouse]

How meta-currency replenishes scarce resources
Update: we have first reincarnation: @ecoTwollar on Twitter. Hope more to come...

Thought-time-bank in this discussion to help make that happen. Carbon credit is a predictive and rigid top down design if it only focuses on one resource and by big players only. It is known to allow abuse and speculation in pollution, not resource saving. And there is the problem of adaptation to uncertain changes in your neighborhood. Issues, open money meta-currency and LETS may have the capacity to address and influence. From this perspective the focus is not on what causes warming, but how to rein in over-consumption.

Perhaps the goal could be making community currency available to exchange acts and information of saving and preserving endangered and scarce resources and not just cleaning air. May be similar, may be not even close. Please generously contribute a little time and add your thoughts and insights.

[Sepp]

"what makes the distinction you say you exercise for Twitter"

I don't really know. It's more like a feeling that I don't have the time to spend on it. I'm also not using a mobile phone or wireless pda, which I think is the preferred way of following and posting to Twitter for many people. My MacBook is already being used all day long, so I feel I can't really add another thing right now that requires even more attention to be put on networking. Question of overload, I guess.

I did get into facebook and like it as a medium. And I'm excited about Google Wave being developed...

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/google-wave-a-p2p-tool/2009/06/03

[onewhouse]

Twitter for me is the ecoTwollar medium. Need to see it in vivo so I can evaluate, test and improve the idea, check it against the medium
Yes, it is very involving, and to force people to re-tag messages so they don't get dropped from the radar sounds a bit like coerced Altruism...

I checked out Wave and like it too...from what I can see so far...
Will see you on FB then...?
Cheers

[Alan Sloan]

Hi, everybody, I'm apparently already registered to this list, but that must have been a long long time ago, I've forgotten the details! I am effectively a newbie. I live in England, Europe, and my view is inevitable biased toward a mechanistic and reductionistic view because of my cultural environment.

An open money system is pretty well uncontrolled by definition, and I've not heard of one which addressses prmary resources.

If we recognise the need to limit gross environmental impacts, (and why stop at carbon?) we need to consider if and how this is possible using an open system or if we need to look deeper for some embedded control system.

The design criteria are no brainers, I'll return to those at some point in the future.

The problem seems to be control of human activity - we can use traditional methods, eg laws and taxes, but these are expensive in manpower and other resources

Advertising, Religion, Music and the Arts and other means of (in this context) social engineering are cheaper than coommand and control.

The conclusion has to be that we need to project and apply a global resource consciousness through many levels and outlets. Our operational currency can support this through mechanisms yet to be designed. I have thoughts on this, but am interested to see if any response happens so far.

Regards to all,

Alan

[Sepp]

Alan,

I am reluctant to believe that "control of humanity" is necessary to better the situation.

The first thing an alternative to the current monetary system should do is remove the compulsion to make profit out of everything, to pay back the money invested plus the interest that is being charged on it. This interest/profit, which is required by the way money is presently configured, in a several-years time makes great demands on anyone who relies on investment to start some productive activity.

In a hypothetical new money environment, just the removal of the constant bleed of resources to those who "provide the money" but make no other contribution to the work, should change the basic parameters for productive activity sufficiently where those working can listen to their conscience and follow an ethical drive, rather than a blind (but necessary under today's conditions) pursuit of profit/interest.

My view is that as long as we haven't tested what changes are achievable just by removing the constraints of the current system that encourage and indeed force unethical and environmentally destructive behavior, it is too early to talk about ontrol mechanisms.

Nothing wrong, by the way, with projecting and applying a global resource consciousness.

What I am saying is that, with the negative constraints out of the way, a fairly light touch may be sufficient to limit the environmental impacts of human activity.

[onewhouse]

The ecoTwollar experiment is now in full swing in the #OpenMoney multi-currency meme as a trial beta on Twitter. Feel encouraged to tweet Give #ecoTwollar Tws for a single VERIFIABLE micro eco-Acts and mark it with a simple but succinct #hashtag. For this to happen, you need to request a pic-link to see if it was genuine and innovative (if it hasn't already been provided.)
And keep propelling the upward spiral, by awarding it in your network and spreading the news on an off-line.
http://wikiwikimoney.com/ecoTwollar

Warmly,
Kind credits: http://wiki.neuesgeld.org/index.php/EcoTwollar
PS. Can you please feature this post...?

[onewhouse]

Georg on weaving micro-currencies added an interesting thought to his wiki. To my mind it nicely dovetails into the eco-currency of our theme here too...

* How can different micro-currencies be combined?
* How to combine international online currencies with regional currencies?
He brings up another example: http://www.stunde.at

If interested, there are more thought provoking ideas there:
http://wiki.neuesgeld.org/index.php/EcoTwollar
You might want to post your impressions and ideas here...thinking to possibly start another discussion on the exciting topic of micro-currency weaving.
Warmly,