Tales of carbon offsets: between experiments and indulgences?

ABSTRACT

Markets in carbon offsetting have, since their inception, been defended by their proponents as ‘experiments’ when it comes to the scale and the scope of their purpose of governing climate mitigation. Yet, different counter-narratives or ‘tales of defiance’ have been mounted as critiques of offsetting. This article focuses in particular on a tale of defiance, which continually has dismissed offsetting as a form of indulgence payment. While acknowledging that there are clear similarities between offsets and indulgence payments, the article argues that the indulgence payment metaphor glosses over the complexity of both types of transactions. The historical development of indulgence payments in the past demonstrates the difficulty of using them as simple models for understanding the problems inherent to offsetting, even if both types of transactions have been controversial. The debates over carbon offsetting continue to evolve, however, and recent developments seem to suggest a third tale, where the funding of emission-reducing projects are seen as donations of development aid, instead of being assumed to compensate for the donor’s emissions.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon offsetting
• value
• payment
• indulgence
• narrative

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank in particular the editors of the special issue, Daniel Seabra Lopes, Inês Faria and Sandra Faustino but also Priscila Santos da Costa and the two anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When it comes to carbon markets there are roughly speaking two types. One is referred to as regulated or compliance markets working through a ‘cap and trade’ model, the other as unregulated or voluntary markets. I will touch more upon this distinction below.

2 As argued by Lovell and Liverman (2010), though, not all critiques have taken into account the considerable variation in types of offset projects – especially given the differences between voluntary and compliance markets.

3 The Clean Development Mechanism is a market mechanism set in place by the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate the offsetting of emissions from industrial countries against emission reducing projects in developing countries.

4 A reviewer suggested that the indulgence critique could likewise be applicable to corporate offset purchases, because some companies voluntarily offset on behalf of their customers – thus making the indulgence mechanism more broadly present.

5 In Danish the linguistic meanings of the term aflad resembles the words for ‘unloading’ or ‘discharging’ something but the etymology refers to ‘letting go’, ‘remitting’, ‘forgiving’ or ‘cancelling’. That is, aflad does not carry the exact same metonymic reference as the English indulgence, but it has obtained the status of synonym in some news stories.

6 See Spash (2010) who rejects that the emission of carbon in itself can be seen as sinful.

7 For a more general discussion of the work of differentiation or the making of alternatives see Dalsgaard (2014, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark under the Sapere Aude Young Research Leader [grant number 8047-00010B] and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [grant number PTDC/IVC-ANT/4520/2014].

Notes on contributors

Steffen Dalsgaard

Steffen Dalsgaard is Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen with a PhD in Anthropology and Ethnography (Aarhus University). He has previously conducted long-term research in Papua New Guinea and is now exploring how ‘carbon’ has become a central value form in the cultural transformation of western societies. Among his publications is the edited volume Time and the Field (with Morten Nielsen, Berghahn 2015).