MMT Carbon Initiative—a modest proposal

With great interest, I’ve been reading about the “Terraton Initiative”—a program designed to enlist farmers to sequester one trillion tons of carbon in their soil using innovative and “regenerative” planting techniques.

我怀着极大的兴趣阅读了“Terraton Initiative”计划，该计划旨在让农民利用创新和“再生”种植技术在土壤中封存 1 万亿吨碳。

The initiative was recently rolled out by Indigo AG —a young and rising Boston company recently named by CNBC as “the world’s most innovative company.” Indigo AG’s mark has been the establishment of a sophisticated platform enabling grain-farmers across the country (and around the world) to differentiate the quality-characteristics of their harvest (e.g. organic, non-GMO, heirloom varietal, etc.) and connect directly with buyers seeking those quality-characteristics.

该计划最近由 Indigo AG 推出，这是一家年轻且正在崛起的波士顿公司，最近被 CNBC 评为“世界上最具创新力的公司”。 Indigo AG 的标志是建立了一个复杂的平台，使全国（以及世界各地）的粮农能够区分其收获的质量特征（例如有机、非转基因、传家宝品种等），并直接与寻求这些质量特征的买家联系。

What got my attention was the fact that Indigo AG, with its recently announced “Terraton Initiative,” is now proposing to help farmers deploy strategies to maximize carbon sequestration in their fields—and then pay the farmers $15 for each ton of carbon they sequester.

引起我注意的是，Indigo AG 最近宣布了“Terraton Initiative”，现在提议帮助农民部署战略，最大限度地在其田地中固碳，然后向农民每固碳一吨支付 15 美元。

(Current agribusiness farming techniques, promoted by Archers Daniels Midland and Monsanto—now Bayer— add 4 billion tons of greenhouse gas to the earth’s atmosphere each year.)

（目前由阿彻丹尼尔斯米德兰和孟山都（现为拜耳）推广的农业综合企业耕作技术每年向地球大气中排放 40 亿吨温室气体。）

To put this in perspective, one trillion tons of CO2 is what human civilization has pumped into the earth’s atmosphere over the past 250 years.

从长远来看，人类文明在过去 250 年中向地球大气中排放了 1 万亿吨二氧化碳。

Indigo AG is proposing to take it all back—and sequester it in the world’s 3.6 billion acres of agricultural soils.

Indigo AG 提议将其全部收回，并将其封存在全球 36 亿英亩的农业土壤中。

End of global warming—end of the threat of climate change!

全球变暖的终结——气候变化威胁的终结！

(Of course, it wouldn’t be that simple since many of the changes are “baked-into” the foreseeable future by mechanisms already set in motion; nevertheless, pushing atmospheric carbon counts back toward pre-industrial levels would obviously be a considerable step in the right direction.)

（当然，事情不会那么简单，因为许多变化是通过已经启动的机制“融入”可预见的未来的；尽管如此，将大气碳计数推回到工业化前的水平显然是朝着正确方向迈出的重要一步。）

There is, of course, another perspective: At $15/ton, achieving the goal of the “Terraton Initiative” will require paying farmers $15 trillion for their services.

当然，还有另一种观点：按照 15 美元/吨计算，实现“Terraton 倡议”的目标将需要向农民支付 15 万亿美元的服务费用。

Indigo AG says it has already lined up a group of “buyers” who will get the ball rolling by purchasing (from Indigo AG) “carbon credits” which they can then use to offset their own carbon footprints—and even claim their products are carbon negative.

Indigo AG 表示，它已经召集了一批“买家”，他们将通过（从 Indigo AG 购买）“碳信用额”来推动活动，然后他们可以用这些信用额来抵消自己的碳足迹，甚至声称他们的产品是负碳的。

Presumably, Indigo AG is making a profit in this transaction; if they’re paying farmers $15/ton they might be selling a credit to that ton for, say, $17.

据推测，Indigo AG 在此次交易中获利；如果他们向农民支付 15 美元/吨，他们可能会以 17 美元的价格出售该吨的信贷。

So, to achieve their goal, they’d have to sell $17 trillion worth of carbon-credits.

因此，为了实现他们的目标，他们必须出售价值 17 万亿美元的碳信用额。

The only way this sounds long-term plausible is if the entire consumer world got on board with the idea of buying only carbon-zero—or carbon-negative—agricultural-based products.

从长远来看，这听起来可行的唯一方法是整个消费者世界都同意只购买零碳或负碳农产品的想法。

Which is unlikely—especially within the ten-year time frame scientists are telling us we are up against to make a significant move to limit atmospheric carbon build-up.

这是不太可能的——尤其是在科学家们告诉我们的十年时间范围内，我们将面临采取重大举措来限制大气碳积累的情况。

Nevertheless, what Indigo AG is undertaking is intriguing (and highly laudatory) for several reasons:

尽管如此，Indigo AG 所做的事情还是很有趣（并且非常值得称赞），原因如下：

The stickler, of course, is: Where is the $17 trillion going to come from to pay the sequesters?

当然，最棘手的问题是：支付隔离金的 17 万亿美元从哪里来？

It seems reasonable to presume that Indigo AG’s carbon-credit “buyers” will, at some point, fall short of that number.

似乎可以合理地推测 Indigo AG 的碳信用“买家”在某个时候将达不到这个数字。

The “profit-motive,” in other words, will soon fail to motivate the creation of the necessary dollars by the Federal Reserve banking system.

换句话说，“利润动机”很快将无法激励美联储银行体系创造必要的美元。

This seems— by definition —a perfect application for the principles of Modern Monetary Theory: The federal government, in other words, would instigate the creation of the dollars necessary to pay for the carbon sequestration efforts.

从定义上看，这似乎是现代货币理论原则的完美应用：换句话说，联邦政府将鼓励创造必要的美元来支付碳封存工作。

To be quite specific, the payments for the sequestered carbon would not come from tax collections.

具体来说，封存碳的费用不会来自税收。

Nor would the payments come from money “borrowed” from the private sector.

付款也不是来自从私营部门“借”的钱。

The payments would be made by the appropriation of new dollars created by the Federal Reserve for the purpose of funding the Treasury’s payments to the participating sequesters.

这些付款将通过拨款美联储创造的新美元来支付，目的是为财政部向参与的自动减支项目提供资金。

The necessary deposits would be made to the Treasury’s spending account by the process of trading future Reserves (i.e. treasury bonds) for existing Reserves—and then trading the future Reserves for new Reserves created by the FED.

必要的存款将通过用未来储备金（即国债）换取现有储备金，然后用未来储备金换取美联储创建的新储备金的过程存入财政部的支出账户。

(The same process, it should be noted, by which the Treasury has been getting its “deficit” spending money for a long, long time.)

（值得注意的是，财政部长期以来一直通过同样的过程获得“赤字”支出资金。）

But why limit what I’m now thinking of as the “MMT Carbon Initiative” to only agricultural carbon-sequestration in support of Indigo AG’s admirable efforts?

但为什么要限制我现在所认为的“MMT 碳倡议”仅限于农业碳封存，以支持 Indigo AG 令人钦佩的努力？

Why not propose that the federal government will buy sequestered carbon—or its equivalent—from anybody?

为什么不建议联邦政府从任何人那里购买封存的碳或类似物呢？

For example, a kilowatt of electricity produced by a solar panel can be calculated to be equivalent to 1000 lbs.

例如，太阳能电池板产生的一千瓦电力可计算为相当于 1000 磅。

of sequestered carbon (carbon that would have been emitted to produce the same electricity with fossil fuels).

封存的碳（使用化石燃料产生相同电力时所排放的碳）。

Families and businesses that install solar panels, therefore, would earn their share of the $15/ton payments.

因此，安装太阳能电池板的家庭和企业将获得每吨 15 美元的付款。

Importantly, there are many less obvious endeavors that would also be motivated (and financially assisted) by the sequestration payments.

重要的是，还有许多不太明显的努力也会受到隔离付款的推动（并得到财政援助）。

Two examples: The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego is developing plant species and hybrids with enhanced capability for storing carbon in their roots.

两个例子：圣地亚哥索尔克生物研究所正在开发具有增强根部碳储存能力的植物品种和杂交品种。

Their success could be financed by the market established by farmers looking for plant varietals that enable them to increase their carbon sequestration payments.

他们的成功可以通过寻找植物品种的农民建立的市场来资助，从而使他们能够增加碳封存费用。

The Marin Carbon Project is a group located in the San Francisco Bay Area that seeks to enhance carbon sequestration not just in cultivated soils, but in unoccupied rangeland and forest soils, by the large-scale recycling of organic waste—including food waste—into compost.

马林碳项目是一个位于旧金山湾区的组织，旨在通过大规模回收有机废物（包括食物垃圾）制成堆肥，不仅在耕种土壤中，而且在未占用的牧场和森林土壤中增强碳固存。

When dumped into landfills, organic waste emits methane (a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) into the atmosphere.

当倾倒到垃圾填埋场时，有机废物会向大气中排放甲烷（一种比二氧化碳更有效的温室气体）。

When it is recycled into compost—and the compost is spread on soils whose capacity to absorb carbon has been severely depleted—the project has determined the revitalized soil can sequester up to 1 ton of CO2 per acre.

当它被回收成堆肥时——并将堆肥撒在吸收碳能力已严重耗尽的土壤上——该项目确定，恢复活力的土壤每英亩最多可以封存 1 吨二氧化碳。

Right now, this group is a non-profit sponsored by charitable fund-raising.

目前，该团体是一个由慈善筹款赞助的非营利组织。

The MMT Carbon Initiative could go a long way to help them expand their efforts.

MMT 碳倡议可以在很大程度上帮助他们扩大努力。

How does the MMT Carbon Initiative differ from a carbon tax—or cap-and-trade system?

MMT 碳倡议与碳税或限额与交易体系有何不同？

A carbon tax sets a price that emitters must pay for each ton of CO2 emissions they create.

碳税设定了排放者必须为其产生的每吨二氧化碳排放支付的价格。

This cost-of-doing business is passed on to consumers who would, presumably, gravitate to products least affected by the tax (i.e. with lower prices)—creating an incentive for businesses to switch fuels or adopt new technologies to lower their emissions.

这种业务成本被转嫁给消费者，他们可能会倾向于购买受税收影响最小的产品（即价格较低），从而激励企业转换燃料或采用新技术来降低排放。

This would create a virtuous cycle that would, through a decentralized, market-based process, reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

这将创造一个良性循环，通过分散的、基于市场的过程，减少大气中的二氧化碳。

All good if you can politically get business to swallow a new tax that intentionally disrupts their existing business models.

如果你能在政治上让企业接受一项有意破坏其现有商业模式的新税，那就太好了。

In a cap-and-trade system, the government sets an emissions cap and issues “emission allowances” to meet that cap.

在总量控制与交易体系中，政府设定排放上限并发放“排放配额”来满足该上限。

Businesses must acquire and hold allowances for every ton of CO2 they emit.

企业必须为其排放的每吨二氧化碳获取并持有配额。

Companies buy and sell the allowances, establishing a price per ton of CO2 emitted.

公司买卖配额，确定每吨二氧化碳排放量的价格。

The net result, presumably, is that businesses are motivated to develop strategies and technologies to reduce their emissions—and are paid to do that by selling their unneeded allowances to other companies which must continue to emit more than their allowance.

最终结果大概是，企业有动力制定战略和技术来减少排放，并通过将不需要的配额出售给必须继续排放超过其配额的其他公司来获得报酬。

This has always seemed to me a round-about and complicated way to create the appearance that markets are magically undertaking the mitigation of climate-change.

在我看来，这是一种迂回而复杂的方式，旨在营造市场正在神奇地承担减缓气候变化的假象。

The MMT carbon initiative seems superior to either a tax, or a cap-and-trade system, on at least two accounts:

MMT 碳倡议至少在两个方面似乎优于税收或限额与交易体系：

At first blush (which is usually how far economic pundits go on the topic) it would seem that adding $17 trillion to the world economy (by paying people newly created dollars to sequester carbon) is—almost by definition—going to create run-away inflation.

乍一看（这通常是经济专家在这个话题上的讨论程度），为世界经济增加 17 万亿美元（通过向人们支付新创造的美元来封存碳）似乎——几乎按照定义——将造成失控的通货膨胀。

Right?

正确的？

How could it not?

怎么可能不呢？

One day, everyone is buying stuff with X no. of dollars, the next day they’re buying the same stuff with X+ 17 trillion dollars—so how is the price of everything in the world not going to explode off the charts requiring people to carry money around in wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread?

有一天，每个人都在买带有 X 号的东西。美元，第二天他们就用 X+ 17 万亿美元购买同样的东西——那么，世界上所有东西的价格怎么可能不会飙升到需要人们用手推车带着钱去买一条面包的地步呢？

Man the barricades against MMT!

筑起路障，对抗现代货币理论！

Prepare for America’s decent into the realms of Venezuelan chaos!

为美国的体面进入委内瑞拉的混乱领域做好准备吧！

But please put these visceral ideological juices aside, and give some thoughtful, rational (and, above all) self-interested consideration of what is really going to unfold with the MMT Carbon Initiative I’ve just outlined:

但请把这些发自内心的意识形态放在一边，对我刚刚概述的 MMT 碳倡议真正将要展开的内容进行一些深思熟虑、理性（最重要的是）自私的考虑：

Dollars are not going to be “dumped” into people’s bank accounts.

美元不会被“倾销”到人们的银行账户中。

They’ll be deposited incrementally—and only in exchange for the accomplishment of real, useful tasks.

它们将逐步存入——并且仅作为完成真实、有用任务的交换条件。

And it’s the real tasks—and the outcomes they achieve—that are the most important things.

真正的任务以及他们取得的成果才是最重要的。

We’re trying to confront, here, an existential threat to human society.

在这里，我们正试图应对人类社会的生存威胁。

So what if one of the residual effects of accomplishing that goal is that a can of Coca-Cola ends up costing $2 instead of $1?

那么，如果实现这一目标的残余影响之一是一罐可口可乐最终售价为 2 美元而不是 1 美元呢？

When I was a kid, a bottle of soda only cost ten cents!

我小时候一瓶汽水只要十美分！

And, in the process of getting from 10 cents to $1, I’ve never once carried money around in a wheelbarrow.

而且，在从 10 美分到 1 美元的过程中，我从来没有用独轮车携带过钱。

In other words, so long as prices rise incrementally—reflecting the incremental expansion of human endeavors and accomplishments—inflation doesn’t matter.

换句话说，只要价格逐步上涨（反映了人类努力和成就的逐步扩张），通货膨胀就无关紧要。

And the MMT Carbon Initiative embodies the very idea of the incremental expansion of useful human endeavors.

MMT 碳倡议体现了逐步扩展人类有用事业的理念。

The final argument I’ll make for the MMT Carbon Initiative is that it is potentially a passive (i.e. non-regulatory) strategy for keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

我对 MMT 碳倡议的最后一个论点是，它可能是一种将化石燃料保留在地下的被动（即非监管）策略。

To have a profound effect, the initiative doesn’t need to accomplish this—but it is enticing to play with back-of-envelop calculations that suggest it plausibly could accomplish it.

为了产生深远的影响，该计划不需要实现这一目标，但进行粗略计算是很有吸引力的，这些计算表明它似乎可以实现这一目标。

And there probably wouldn’t be a bigger game-changer in the race against global warming than significantly limiting—for a period of, say, 10 years—the extraction and refinement of fossil-fuels.

在对抗全球变暖的竞赛中，最能改变游戏规则的可能莫过于大幅限制——比如在十年内——化石燃料的开采和精炼。

My back-of-envelop calculations are based on the presumption that oil and gas companies want to figure out a profitable way to transition to alternative fuels and energy systems.

我的粗略计算基于这样的假设：石油和天然气公司希望找到一种有利可图的方式来过渡到替代燃料和能源系统。

The MMT Carbon Initiative—paying anyone $15/ton for sequestered carbon—could get their attention (and participation).

MMT 碳倡议——向任何人支付 15 美元/吨的碳封存费用——可以引起他们的关注（和参与）。

Here’s the calculations (using quick, google-search numbers):

以下是计算结果（使用快速的谷歌搜索数字）：

It should be noted that the MMT Carbon Initiative, itself, for the same reason just illustrated, could be given a ten-year time limit.

应该指出的是，出于刚才说明的同样原因，MMT 碳倡议本身可能有十年的期限。

Ideally, at the end of that “decade of sequestration,” not only would the world be operating on a zero-carbon energy model, but atmospheric carbon would be re-established near pre-industrial levels.

理想情况下，在“十年封存”结束时，世界不仅将在零碳能源模式下运行，而且大气中的碳含量将恢复到接近工业化前的水平。

An astonishing collateral benefit would be the transformation of world agribusiness into a “regenerative” process that builds topsoil, conserves water, and produces healthier food.

一个惊人的附带好处是，世界农业企业将转变为“再生”过程，建设表土、节约用水并生产更健康的食品。

Perhaps, a decade hence, the experience of accomplishing all this will have brought us together around the realization that we can, as a collective society, use a modern understanding of money to accomplish things we didn’t think possible.

也许十年后，实现这一切的经验将使我们认识到，作为一个集体社会​​，我们可以利用对金钱的现代理解来完成我们认为不可能的事情。

At that point perhaps we could genuinely—and with an effort equal to what we’d just undertaken—focus on saving the other species on the planet that we’ve put gravely in danger.

到那时，也许我们可以真正地——并付出与我们刚才所做的同等的努力——专注于拯救地球上被我们置于严重危险之中的其他物种。