This paper discusses the possibility to go beyond the critique of carbon markets by offering an alternative, democratic, model for allocating greenhouse gas emissions rights, rather than one based on the ability to pay. Taking stock of the substantial critique that have been made of markets for allocating such rights, it seeks to offer a non-market based, yet realist, mechanism. This non-market mechanism is grounded in the literature on democratic economic planning as applied to environmental questions. It delineates the proposition for a Climate Protection Agency through which competing interests and visions could be represented – and transformed – in the process of allocating limited rights. This alternative model is offered in the spirit of “real utopias”. Discussions of the desirability, viability, and achievability of the model are made by way of comparison with a similar – but actually existing – model, namely the distribution of land-use rights in Switzerland.