It’s 2011. The world’s a little warmer, sea levels are a little higher and people in the Maldives are a little jumpier. And if Environment Secretary David Miliband is to be believed, part of the solution to climate change could lie in the pockets of the British public.

On 19 July 2006, Miliband proposed personal carbon-rationing cards as a fairer alternative to a greenhouse emissions tax. In so doing, he made us the first country to air the idea as viable. If this notion is realised, it could serve to make the desperately needed paradigm shift in England’s environmental stance, altering consumer behaviour and enabling us to reach our 2050 targets. But would it work in practice? Would one group benefit over another? Is there a danger in placing too much onus on the public? And is this just another example of the government forcing us into a nanny state?

The existence of climate change is now almost unanimously agreed on and, as such, the carbon that is seen to be responsible for this change has emerged as a new currency, with greenhouse gas emissions traded across Europe and the world. Miliband’s proposal – to issue every citizen with a personal ration card for greenhouse gases – moves the concept another step down the consumption chain, placing responsibility with the public.

In his speech, given at the Audit Commission annual lecture, Miliband likened climate change to the Great Stink of the mid-19th Century, caused by the stench of effluent in the Thames. He called for an environmental contract, which would have the same effect on our institutions, norms and values as the social contract developed in the last century. He argued: “The challenge is for politics and policy to catalyse and diffuse these practical innovations in a way that fundamentally changes the way we live and work, pricing into our decisions, for the first time, the cost of climate change.”

Thus the idea of carbon cards, as suggested in 2005 by Elliott Morley, has been brought back into the spotlight. The resulting carbon card – an amalgamation of a bank card with a carbon-rationing card – would place the environmental onus on the consumer, with every purchase being monitored for its environmental impact and deducted from a damage allowance. Everyone would receive the same free entitlement to a certain number of carbon points. Any that are not used could be sold back to a central bank. Not only would this work as an incentive for carbon guzzlers to reduce their fossil fuel reliance, it would potentially benefit those members of society with less money – fewer cars and overseas holidays equate to a much lower carbon consumption, so left over credits could be sold on. Those people who refuse to lower their consumption rate would have to buy extra credits from the bank at an elevated price. Miliband argued that this new deal for citizens would have to be ‘empowering not paternalistic’ – a necessary concern when issuing citizens with an allowance.

Over-protection aside, this is a practical response to a growing and unavoidable problem. It would mean that companies would have to compete on their green credentials if they wish to survive the resulting phase of consumer activity. According to Miliband, if this happens we would be positioning ourselves ‘at the forefront of an economy that is much less dependent on carbon’, so gaining ‘first-mover advantages as we develop new industries and business models’.

But how quickly would we be able to make this domestic u-turn in public behaviour; could the rich simply keep buying their Chelsea tractors, plasma televisions and skiing holidays in Dubai, ignoring the inflated prices that come with exceeding allocated carbon spends?

If we look to the transport industry, with petrol prices ever increasing, we can already see how price affects public spend. A 2002 review by the Department of Transport hypothesised: “If the price of fuel were to go up and stay up by 10 per cent, the volume of traffic would go down by roughly one per cent within about a year, building up to a reduction of about three per cent in the longer run (about five years).” A change occurs, but it is not dramatic, or particularly fast. As the carbon cards would work in a similarly financially motivated way – still relying on people to make positive choices – they would need to be backed up by education.

London based product innovation consultancy Design Stream and Identity specialist Sven Vogel, see potential in linking the carbon card with smart card technology as a means of helping the public make better and more informed choices on consumption. The result of its thinking comes in the form of the Emissary card. Whilst monitoring our carbon consumption, the Emissary cards would display moving images/messages relating to our purchases on the cards, supposedly affecting our attitudes to what we buy.

This is, at present, just a concept. Chaz Nandra, of Design Stream technology, commented: “One of the biggest problems with the card is that there’s still a technology limitation with it. At the moment you’re seeing several advances in card chip technology; they can store more information and they’re getting to a point where you can read and write onto them. At the same time you’re seeing fairly big advances in screen technology, particularly flexible screen technology. So the idea was really that we would just try to postulate say, anywhere between five and 10 years in the future, and think, if screens are getting thin, flexible and particularly cheap, and card capacity and power is moving up, would you ever get to a point where you could have animations on cards?”

Nandra believes that people are most receptive to stimuli at the point of purchase, so by being able to relay messages at this point, you can encourage ethical consumption: “It seemed like a really good idea to pair that up with the idea of carbon credits by David Miliband… so that people start to assess their individual environmental impact. Imagine an infrastructure where you can relay certain messages through the actual card that’s used to purchase your fuel. For example, I make a purchase, then I put my Emissary card into the machine, type in my pin details, and in that time an ethical message can be written back onto the card, so that when I receive it, when I actually take the card out of the machine, there’s something that plays on it.” Nandra believes that it could be made available at all levels of consumption, from holidays to coffee. If the concept becomes a reality, quantum leap five years or so, and we could all have our very own Ziggies, providing us with advice and information on how to save the planet.

While this technology is fast progressing, and the need for urgent action is becoming all the more apparent, these ideas are still in their infancy. As Miliband noted: “Personal carbon trading is not for the short term, nor is it a silver bullet.” He urged people not to dismiss carbon rationing as ‘too complex administratively, too utopian or too much of a burden for citizens’. Indeed, the notion may be wrought with problems, but with the government finding so many new ways to police us, at least this proposal is positive and displays a clear commitment to the environmental cause. It’s a first, reassuring step for the increasingly aware British public and for those Maldivians.