{"id":1074,"date":"2025-08-24T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T10:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2025-08-29T19:13:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T19:13:36","slug":"we-used-to-stash-gold-in-fort-knox-what-if-we-did-the-same-with-carbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/24\/we-used-to-stash-gold-in-fort-knox-what-if-we-did-the-same-with-carbon\/","title":{"rendered":"We used to stash gold in Fort Knox. What if we did the same with carbon?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story was originally published by <\/em>Mother Jones<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk<\/a> collaboration. <\/em><\/p>\n

The US government is a big-time hoarder. At last count, in three locations \u2014 Denver, Fort Knox, and West Point\u2014 it had socked away 248,046,115.696 troy ounces of gold. One might think to round that to the nearest ounce, but at today\u2019s prices<\/a>, that extra 0.304 ounces of gold would fetch about $1,060, and the entire hoard is worth more than $865 billion. Except it isn\u2019t, because this gold is not for sale.<\/p>\n

Sequestration has rendered it priceless.<\/p>\n

Why do we keep it? Good question. President Richard Nixon ended the Gold Standard more than a half-century ago \u2014 that is, the practice of using gold reserves to backstop the dollar. For 54 years now, the value of our currency has been based on faith<\/em> \u2014 that the United States, like the Lannisters<\/a>, always pays its debts. There\u2019s not much practical sense in keeping all this treasure around, though. It\u2019s a symbolic, quasi-religious thing. \u201cI think it\u2019s because gold has been an index of power for thousands of years,\u201d says Gustav Peebles<\/a>, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. \u201cI think of it as a sacred hoard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peebles, who is American, has been thinking about this a lot. Because, if people can unearth vast amounts of a \u201cprofane\u201d commodity such as gold, build an economy around it, and then take most of that gold out of circulation and into the realm of the sacred, why couldn\u2019t we do the same thing with other profane commodities \u2014 like excess atmospheric carbon? Why couldn\u2019t we collect it, bank it, and then stow it away, harmless?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve tried other tactics. The world\u2019s wealthiest 10 percent are responsible for<\/a> two-thirds of global carbon emissions, but the comfort class hasn\u2019t shown much willingness to change its behavior. Nor have governments done enough \u2014 the Trump administration is now taking us backward<\/a> \u2014 and industrial polluters aren\u2019t about to do the right thing. Tech solutions like direct air capture are pricey and problematic, as this magazine has reported<\/a>. But if we could convince the masses that waste carbon dioxide is sacred and worth hoarding \u2014 like gold \u2014 one of our most existential problems might solve itself.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t scoff. We all have questions. But Peebles is serious. An expert in the history of monetary systems, among other things, he has teamed up with the multidisciplinary artist\u00a0Ben Luzzatto<\/a>\u00a0to develop the idea in depth. The result is a thought-provoking new book,\u00a0The First and Last Bank<\/a><\/em>, which weaves in aspects of history, monetary policy, philosophy, and religion to make its case. A utopian case perhaps, but Peebles insists that the necessary structures and precedents already exist.<\/p>\n

Peebles was visiting\u00a0his friend in the Adirondacks, where Luzzatto was working on\u00a0conceptual projects<\/a>\u00a0related to environmental sustainability, when a lightbulb flicked on. \u201cSitting around the campfire at night, we sort of had this a-ha experience about the gold standard and how it can serve as a beta test,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThe history of banks is intertwined with the history of temples, and they both have a long history of making things priceless \u2014 taking a cherished good off the market. And that\u2019s just hasn\u2019t been interesting to economists for some reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

But wait, banking carbon<\/em> \u2014 what would that look like in practice?<\/p>\n

Consider all the cellulosic carbon waste \u2014 corn stalks and such \u2014 that farmers clear from their fields in large quantities after every harvest. And all the tree and plant waste generated by arborists, homeowners, landscapers, municipalities, and forestry operations. Put these carbon-rich materials into a big machine called a pyrolizer and heat it in the absence of oxygen, and you end up with a stable, solid form of carbon known as biochar.<\/p>\n

Biochar is already a commodity<\/a> with myriad uses \u2014 as a yield-improving soil amendment for farms and garden, as a building insulator, as an absorptive agent for water filtration and wastewater treatment. It can also be stored in rural warehouses or simply buried, locking away waste carbon for hundreds of years depending on its composition<\/a> and surroundings<\/a> \u2014 which is why it plays a growing role<\/a> in today\u2019s market for carbon offsets.<\/p>\n

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Peebles and Luzzatto have grander aspirations. Their idea is not one-size-fits-all but, very broadly, they envision small communities \u2014 churches, towns, colleges, etc. \u2014 creating their own cooperative carbon banks to accept organic waste from depositors (locals and businesses). The bank would pyrolize and quantify these deposits on site. \u201cIt would be like the gold assayers of old. The assaying would happen at the bank. Instead of risk managers at Wall Street banks, we would need a soil scientist,\u201d Peebles explains.<\/p>\n

The depositors, in exchange, would receive digital currency they could trade for goods and services within that community \u2014 something akin to a cryptocurrency, but grounded in a commodity with real-world value. Companies looking to boost their environmental bona fides would open their own accounts at the bank, whose verification process would be transparent and verifiable \u2014 unlike many of the fraudulent schemes in today\u2019s carbon-credit markets. \u201cAnd then people would want to buy their products to support a transition to a post-carbon economy,\u201d Peebles says.<\/p>\n

Community members with no organic waste to deposit could buy into these local currency systems by opening accounts and depositing dollars, thereby supporting the sequestration mission, and getting fungible digital tokens in return.<\/p>\n

In the authors\u2019 optimistic vision, a grassroots movement would emerge organically from at first a handful \u2014 then tens, hundreds, and thousands \u2014 of these community efforts. That\u2019s the beauty of it. Donald Trump and his toadies could bitch and moan and it wouldn\u2019t matter, because the approach doesn\u2019t require the buy-in of politicians or big firms or slow-moving government bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little-known fact that colleges and banks used to issue their own currencies \u2014 it was very common in America in the 19th century, so we think the movement could start at a college,\u201d Peebles told me. \u201cIt could be part of a curriculum with a bunch of 20-somethings who want to think about what it would look like to run a carbon bank, and the college could backstop it with dollars so the local merchants were interested in joining the community of exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 49ers\u2019 quest to dig up gold was, of course, motivated by greed. One might then argue that waste carbon won\u2019t ever be valuable enough for people to want to bother collecting it. But consider that Bitcoin was all but worthless in its early days. It was nurtured by a community of people who were inspired by utopian ideas to \u201cmine\u201d it. Famously, in the first real-world Bitcoin transaction, in May 2010, a Florida software developer named Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 coins for a couple of Papa John\u2019s pizzas. Those Bitcoins, then valued at about $41, would fetch nearly $1.2 billion today. Hope he got extra pepperoni at least.<\/p>\n

In any case, the carbon banking idea pairs a collective feel-good element with modest financial benefits. Homeowners and small commercial entities typically pay to dispose of yard waste via local taxes or fees. In this scheme, they get something of value back \u2014 both monetary and spiritual, perhaps. Again, some participants would contribute cash to bolster the effort. \u201cIf we bring our collective buying power together and we say that we want to pay a higher price than what the carbon waste is worth, that will create a centrifugal movement of carbon waste into our banks,\u201d Peebles says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe do think people might be hungry for a meaningful way of doing their part for the climate battle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

This, too, mirrors the Gold Rush. Regional banks were the monopoly purchasers, and you\u2019d naturally bring your gold to the one that offered the best price. But there\u2019s a balance to be struck here; relative to gold, carbon waste is abundant and not terribly sexy. You\u2019d want biochar to fetch a high enough price to incentivize people to participate \u2014 and perhaps seed fields of fast-growing crops, hemp and such, to sequester more carbon. But you also don\u2019t want to encourage people to raze forests or steal their neighbor\u2019s shrubberies for cash.<\/p>\n

Checking people\u2019s deposits for legitimacy is part of the assayer\u2019s role, Peebles says. \u201cThere are ways of spotting, you know, is it fresh wood that was alive yesterday?\u201d What\u2019s more, local forestland, properly managed, could become part of a given bank\u2019s carbon reserves. \u201cWe only propose biochar as a transitionary tactic because it mimics the gold standard,\u201d he says. But ultimately the banks will incorporate other ways to sequester carbon \u2014 say, untapped oil and gas that a landowner opts to leave in the ground.<\/p>\n

The authors don\u2019t foresee a mad Carbon Rush, \u201cbut we do think people might be hungry for a meaningful way of doing their part for the climate battle. And I think that having a collective institution will give them that,\u201d Peebles says. \u201cIn the book, we talk about the nature of volunteer labor in temples. And temples always have, you know, remunerated workers and volunteer workers. Both are necessary, and we think this is more like that \u2014 instead of a gold rush.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has two thoughts on the abundance problem. First, \u201cit\u2019s actually not that easy to make good biochar,\u201d Peebles says. It requires time and effort to get it right, \u201cso that\u2019s not as abundant as carbon itself.\u201d What\u2019s more, the gold standard was abandoned in part because people were hoarding<\/em> gold<\/a>: \u201cIt became too scarce, and so it couldn\u2019t expand with the economy.\u201d Central banks, too, know how to deal with overabundance<\/a> problems via the monetary technique of \u201csterilization<\/a>.\u201d In 1936 and 1937, for example, as excess foreign gold flowed into US banks, the Federal Reserve, fearing inflation, ordered banks<\/a> to beef up the reserves they kept on hand and issued bonds to sop up the excess money in circulation.<\/p>\n

In fact, when the authors finished their manuscript, they asked a macroeconomist to read it and offer critiques. He thought the carbon banks were a great idea and he asked, according to Peebles, \u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t we just ask the Fed to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, because the clock is ticking. \u201cForty years ago, maybe we would have asked, but we\u2019re not going to wait around for them to move,\u201d Peebles says. \u201cWe think building a grassroots banking system would be the one thing that might make the Fed wake up and say, \u2018Huh, okay, now we have a threat.\u2019 These carbon banks are a threat to our system because they\u2019re growing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the desire of governments to regulate the gold reserves of private banks was one of the primary triggers that built the central banking system that exists today. \u201cWe have the tools to build this locally, and I would love for the Fed to do this, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019re going to do it until we build it ourselves,\u201d Peebles says.<\/p>\n

Yet it still sounds so far-fetched, doesn\u2019t it \u2014 in this era of rampant disinformation and unchecked greed, with a federal government openly hostile to protecting the environment and safeguarding the health of its land and people \u2014 that a utopian economic movement could spring up and alter our collision course with the laws of nature?<\/p>\n

Then again, every social movement begin as a longshot. Peebles cites the rise of Protestantism in the 16th and 17th centuries and the growth of central banks during the 19th century. We had the US civil rights movement, of course. And the creation of the Euro: \u201cIt\u2019s been a disaster in many ways, right?\u201d Peebles says. \u201cIt\u2019s gone through multiple crises, but the Euro is still around because a certain group of people is committed to it. And that was started by a small group of acolytes who were enthusiastic about a vision and pushed it forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need everyone to be excited about this right off the bat,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can start small, and if it works, then it can spread from there.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The US government is a big-time hoarder. At last count, in three locations \u2014 Denver, Fort Knox, and West Point\u2014 it had socked away 248,046,115.696 troy ounces of gold. One might think to round that to the nearest ounce,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1076,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1080,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}