The fantasy of carbon offsetting

ABSTRACT

Carbon offsetting has been beset by problems and failures, and relies on the mobilisation of supportive discourses and knowledge-claims to retain a sense of credibility. Psycho-analytical ideology critique can help explain how these processes interact with questions of subjectivity. Analysis of interviews with carbon offset market practitioners suggests that identification with carbon offsetting is only partial, and that it is sustained through disavowal, through trust in the authority of the Other, and through desire for carbon offsetting’s unrealisable promises. It is important to grapple with the fantasy that sustains carbon offsetting in order to better understand, and indeed contest, its enduring appeal and its continued inclusion in climate governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon offsetting
• fantasy
• discourse
• knowledge
• disavowal

Acknowledgments

I thank the anonymous referees and the editor for their many constructive reccomendations. I am grateful to Matthew Paterson and Japhy Wilson for comments on an early draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Real can be viewed as both an inert presence that resists symbolisation, and a void around which the symbolic order is structured (Žižek 1989, Wilson 2014b, p. 304). The Real subverts signification; it can never be fully represented (Fletcher 2014, p. 90). Although we can never fully grasp it, we can still appreciate the Real through its ‘effectivity’, through the distortions and disruptions it produces in the symbolic order (Žižek 1989, p. 191).

2. On this account, carbon dioxide stands in as a scapegoat, as the entity that is supposed to have stolen our jouissance, even though in truth it is permanently lost. Other scapegoat figures have been cast as thieves of enjoyment, such as the criminalised (Dean 2008), the Jew (Žižek 1989), and the racialised Other (Kapoor 2014), who are often deemed over-populous (Fletcher et al. 2014).

3. This can be conceptualised as the intrusion of ‘symptom’ (c.f. Wilson 2015c).

4. The interviewee’s lack of expertise is visible in the hope that there is ‘no additionality’, when in fact it is necessary to have additionality: its absence undermines the whole concept of an offset (c.f. Paterson 2010, p. 354).

5. Žižek (1999, p.302) uses the example of a seduction scene to illustrate the retraction: The question ‘Would you care to come to my place for a coffee?’ generates a reply ‘Well, I don’t drink coffee … ’ to which the rejoinder is: ‘No problem, I haven’t got any!’

6. At stake within the retraction is the encouragement of ‘northern consumers to consider part of their emissions to be simply “unavoidable” rather than as part of a pattern of energy use that can only be tackled through political and social organizing’ (Lohmann 2008, p. 363).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value.