Tribune. It is an observation that seems to be shared by the entire political class: young people have undoubtedly been the big loser of the Covid-19 crisis. To remedy this, the government recently announced that it was working to create a monthly aid, in the order of 500 euros, for unemployed young people.
Without opposing the creation of this aid, we believe that a more ambitious, fair and virtuous policy is possible. This policy should take into account the environmental aspirations of the younger generations by putting the environment back at the center of public debate.
For many years, one of the main obstacles identified by economists in the implementation of an environmental policy was that the benefits and costs were not borne by the same people. Indeed, combating climate change today imposes high costs on present generations, while the expected benefits concern future generations.
The fight against climate change
The various protest movements observed during recent attempts to strengthen environmental taxation attest to this problem. On the other hand, so little is done now (to the benefit if we can say of the present generations), the costs of climate change will be borne by future generations, until recently silent because absent.
These generations are now there, and have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. Aware of the danger, young people are largely involved in the fight against climate change as evidenced for example by their involvement in various events, such as the March for the climate.
Rather than giving monthly help in euros to some of the youth, we think it would be beneficial to give them free CO emission permits.2. European companies in the most polluting sectors are now required to cover their greenhouse gas emissions below a certain quota granted to them. If they exceed this quota, they must then buy the emission permits on the European market, otherwise they face heavy financial penalties.
Climate “property rights”
By distributing part of the quotas to young people, the latter could then choose to sell their permits to companies on the European market and recover a sum of money, or else to keep these permits and “freeze” them, if they consider that the European climate policy, characterized by the total number of allowances granted, is not ambitious enough.
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