ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the extent to which individual carbon-rationing schemes such as Personal Carbon Allowances can be regarded as eco-social policy instruments suitable for not only reducing carbon emissions but also for addressing the double injustice of climate change. It outlines three methods of environmental regulation direct regulation, Pigouvian taxation, and market solutions and associated eco-social policies and then reviews the literature and preliminary evidence on the feasibility of personal carbon allowances as a climate change mitigation mechanism and an eco-social policy tool. Supporters of market solutions in environmental regulation admit that the establishment of carbon markets is not cheap at the beginning, since governments have to spend money and devote resources to the definition and enforcement of progressively strict overall caps on emissions. They also have to allocate emission quotas among the industries and individuals under their jurisdiction and set up the legal and measurement machinery for making them tradable.
