"Carbon Micro Credits" -- A Genealogy & Ontogeny

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Hello Everyone,

On 11 April 2009, Otto Newhouse made a nice and informative post on our Facebook page about my using the term "Carbon Micro Credits" first, which I reproduce down below, and which I replied to there. But I also reproduce here my response to him for your information:


Hello Otto !

Thank you for your kind post. Great minds think alike.

And to be fair and transparent, to my knowledge two other people/groups used the term, or a variation thereof, of "Carbon Micro Credit" before -- some academics at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and one blogger who made a one-paragraph post 18 - 24 months ago, about the same time I was registering a few hundred domain names related to carbon credits, including: http://www.CarbonMicroCredit.com -- which I still own.

The academics sole line of discussion was that supercomputers or the expansion of computing power would make it possible to keep track of micro carbon credits. But their focus was on micro credits for rich consumers in developed countries who changed their energy-consumption level, such as by adding insulation to their homes.

And the one-shot one-paragraph blogger said utility companies in the U.S. would offer carbon micro credits to customers who, for example, bought an energy-efficient refrigerator. But that's all he wrote; end of story.

So, to emphasize, none of these people/groups ever mentioned using Carbon Micro Credits in the Developing World, where only a "micro" something has real value to the recipients (the Poor) anyway.

No one else ever proposed to use a cell phone and SMS messages as the information technology base to lower transaction costs almost to zero.

No one else ever proposed to redeem/monetize Carbon Micro Credits with cell phone minutes as the payment form or currency.

No one else ever took a markets-driven approach based on PRE-selling Carbon MACRO Credits -- the aggregated and crowd-sourced Carbon Micro Credits -- in order to secure all the needed start-up capital to fund a large-scale carbon micro-offset program including 1,000s or 10s of thousands of families.

Etc. Etc.

In sum, Carbon Micro Credits as defined under the Carbon Manna paradigm are very very unique. And close to large-scale implementation in 2 districts in Western Kenya. Not to contradict King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, but there are some new things under the sun.

Thanks again for posting here. If you send me your email address, I will forward our Carbon Manna PowerPoint presentation to you.

Globally & warmly yours, David

David A. Palella
Founder
CARBON MANNA UNLIMITED
San Diego, California
cell: 619-787-5767
email: dpalella@san.rr.com

http://www.carbonmanna.org

http://carbonmanna.blogspot.com

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Otto Newhouse wrote at 8:19pm on April 11th, 2009

Hi David, ---

Recently started a discussion on openmoney.ning with folks who develop platforms for targeted complementary currencies:
http://openmoney.ning.com/forum/topics/micro-carboncredit

The idea that is developing there is to apply a bottom-up micro-market for ANY type of energy efficient verified deep ecology micro-act and we use the term "micro carbon-credit" for a want of a better term, such as "micro resourcefulness-credit" which is a tad tedious to get used to and might still not give the full picture.

Since then I have been actively seeking out complimentary ideas, stumbled on your carbonmanna and find it pretty inspirational. It is my duty to admit your primacy to the term of Carbon Micro-credit, though non of us I believe knew about your initiative before. And it may serve as a matter of pride for your innovative concept, that others independently came to the same conclusion, that such credits can only really work from the bottom up in small but growing measures.

Warmly, Otto Newhouse

From: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52270598714

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