The Problem: American Express currently give out airmiles to customers, which contributes to climate change.
The Solution: Donate 25% of airmiles collected by Amex customers into a fund to buy, protect and restore the Amazon rainforest.
This idea is quite simple, and similar to the Nectar Points proposal in a previous post. Protecting and restoring key carbon sinks is now widely agreed to be a key part of reducing net emissions and halting global warming, so more ways need to be found to finance such initiatives.
I therefore propose that 25% of Amex points collected by customers are donated into a fund that will buy land in the Amazon rainforest that has been degraded by commercial farming and timber exploitation and finance the protection and natural restoration of that land.
To make the scheme more attractive to Amex customers, luxury tourist lodges would be built on the site, that only Amex customers had access to; the area would in effect become a private nature reserve for the exclusive use of Amex customers. The reserve itself would be run by local people living in the area, who would therefore benefit from the programme as opposed to suffering from prior commercial activities; they would be paid to guard and restore the land, to run the tourist lodges and act as guides on safari.
To create additional incentives for Amex customers, Amex points could be used to pay for holidays to the reserve, footing the cost of both flights and accommodation and guiding fees. For customers that would offer a free, luxury and exclusive holiday package, and for Amex, since they would own the reserve, a more cost-effective way of using their points, as the revenue that would usually go to airlines and other businesses would instead stay with them.
A key advantage of this proposal is that it creates a product that is highly aspirational and used by wealthier parts of society to raise funds to fight climate change, which don’t cost the consumer anything and also has a small impact on reducing aviation emissions. Few, if any, stereo-typical environmentalists would have an Amex card, so the scheme would appeal to a wider audience of people who care about the environment (most people) but are not passionate about it. It would also appeal to those who couldn’t care less about the environment but who like holidays, so it can reach a broad audience.
It also suggests another way to finance these natural restoration carbon sequestration schemes, which is to create a green credit card, which uses the revenue from fees charged not to make profit, but to plant trees. Like Ecosia has done for search engines, such a business could do for credit cards.
By combining both the Amex proposal in this post with a new, climate change credit card, hundreds of millions of pounds could be raised for natural solutions to carbon sequestration, which would not cost customers anything and would make it easy for them to fight against climate change, simply by spending money on their credit cards, as they already are doing.
That is a powerful, simple tool for change; the very definition, perhaps, of ‘slactivism’.
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