The First and Last Bank : Climate Change, Currency, and a New Carbon Commons
Book Details
Format
Paperback / Softback
ISBN-10
0262049643
ISBN-13
9780262049641
Publisher
MIT Press Ltd
Imprint
MIT Press
Country of Manufacture
US
Country of Publication
GB
Publication Date
Jun 17th, 2025
Print length
264 Pages
Weight
352 grams
Dimensions
15.30 x 23.00 x 2.50 cms
Product Classification:
Finance
Ksh 6,500.00
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A groundbreaking approach to currency and community that may allow us to seize carbon from the atmosphere and offer a new tool in the fight against climate change.
A groundbreaking approach to currency and community that may allow us to seize carbon from the atmosphereand offer a new tool in the fight against climate change.
Through the ages, currencies have been based on all manner of objectsfrom tobacco leaves to salt to gold to collateralized debt obligations. The only thing that this odd assortment of objects shares is the communal belief that these objects could harness and direct economic growththat they were, in a sense, fertile. In The First and Last Bank, Gustav Peebles and Benjamin Luzzatto propose that atmospheric carbon could be seen anew as fertile in this same sense. In other words, carbon, rather than loom as waste in our skies, could instead be drawn down to the earth by millions of currency users and the communally owned banks they rely on, where it could serve as a foundation of new biological life.
Seeing currency as a powerful tool for collective action, the authors argue that dovetailing developments in digital currencies and the biosequestration of carbon have, together, made a new and radical intervention in the climate battle possible: a nonproprietary currency backed by sequestered carbon. This new currency would be managed via Wikipedia-style open-source policies that privilege sustainability and equity over endless growth and pollution. Because it is backed by sequestered carbon, the use of the currency would draw gaseous carbon out of the atmosphere and push it back into the ground, following the exact same trajectory as gold during the era of the international gold standard. While it is no silver bullet, such a currency would act as a necessary complement to wide-scale mitigation efforts, at the same time engaging ordinary citizens in the fight to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon in our atmosphere.
Through the ages, currencies have been based on all manner of objectsfrom tobacco leaves to salt to gold to collateralized debt obligations. The only thing that this odd assortment of objects shares is the communal belief that these objects could harness and direct economic growththat they were, in a sense, fertile. In The First and Last Bank, Gustav Peebles and Benjamin Luzzatto propose that atmospheric carbon could be seen anew as fertile in this same sense. In other words, carbon, rather than loom as waste in our skies, could instead be drawn down to the earth by millions of currency users and the communally owned banks they rely on, where it could serve as a foundation of new biological life.
Seeing currency as a powerful tool for collective action, the authors argue that dovetailing developments in digital currencies and the biosequestration of carbon have, together, made a new and radical intervention in the climate battle possible: a nonproprietary currency backed by sequestered carbon. This new currency would be managed via Wikipedia-style open-source policies that privilege sustainability and equity over endless growth and pollution. Because it is backed by sequestered carbon, the use of the currency would draw gaseous carbon out of the atmosphere and push it back into the ground, following the exact same trajectory as gold during the era of the international gold standard. While it is no silver bullet, such a currency would act as a necessary complement to wide-scale mitigation efforts, at the same time engaging ordinary citizens in the fight to reduce the dangerous levels of carbon in our atmosphere.
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