By Fraser Brown

1. We carbon-tax bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining. The greater the carbon footprint of the energy used the higher the tax. This will drive renewable energy as a primary means to create Bitcoin, and once we have mined them all leave us with a global renewable infrastructure capable of supplying electric vehicles needs.

2. Tax revenue in the form of Bitcoin finances global reforestation. The capital can seamlessly flow into growing trees without touching any centralised purse and here’s how. A blockchain powered autonomous mechanism is created to pay tree planters, reforestation project designers, and verifiers annually upon an annual digital verification (ADV) event proving that the trees are alive. Conservation organisations – either existing or an entirely new breed – could be part of a decentralised autonomous organisation voting (within the blockchain application) on project proposals and thereby assigning the Bitcoin resources. Poor communities globally could capitalise on this frictionless and straightforward mechanism while countries see a new inflow of “money”.

3. We need a global coalition to form this side of 2018 preferably including the Bitcoin Foundation as well as many of our influential environmental and conservation institutions. Ideally, the Bitcoin “sector” would put forward its proposals so that mechanisms such as the Paris Accord are unnecessary. The full global cooperation should be in place by COP24 in November 2018.

• Bitcoiners win through the regularisation of the technology globally and increasing its use worldwide.

• Governments win by addressing climate change and heralding the future infrastructure that we need to see much sooner than planned.

• People win by continuing to capitalise on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency’s benefits, by living in an increasing sustainable planet, and by attaining real hope.

• Finally, conservation organisations (or more nimble spin-offs) win through reinventing themselves not as brokers to private finance deals which is the current unnatural direction of travel, but by playing to their strengths, showing us the way, and driving restoration of our planet’s ecosystems.

We can be the restoration generation.

I’ve called it BitTree. It’s achievable, realistic, and necessary.

First published on LinkedIn.

Fraser Brown is the Founder and Chairman, ACT Foundation Switzerland.