The Pope and Carbon Markets

Andrew Gilder (ENS)

I was asked this question by email by a colleague: '…whether at a deep moral level carbon offsetting is flawed as a concept (“I don’t feel like making my bed but I’ll pay you to make yours and one other”). Can we really pay for someone else to do it while retaining that sense of being responsible or is it like parents who give their kids lots of money and drop at a mall for a Saturday rather than parent them?'

  This question was based on the Papal Encyclical that was recently issued.

• A summary of the views expressed on sustainable development in the recent Papal Encyclical (written non-infallibly) can be found here: http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/413515/the-pope-supports-the-principle-of-common-but-differentiated-responsibility-stresses-social-and-justice-concerns/

 

• The following two articles which respond to the Pope’s position on offsetting (the articles are from the Ecosystem Marketplace):  

 

• Offsets Are A Tool, Not An Indulgence
  http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=11024&section=news_articles&eod=1
  In this piece, Molly Peters-Stanley explains the rationale behind offsetting – how transactions transpire, and how offsetting expands the range of possibilities at a company’s (or an individual’s) disposal.
  
  What The Pope Gets Wrong On Offsetting
  http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/pages/dynamic/article.page.php?page_id=11029&section=news_articles&eod=1
  In this piece, Steve Zwick unpacks our research into more than 200 companies that actually use offsetting. Far from using offsets to avoid responsibility, he finds, most use them to reduce emissions far beyond their own immediate base of operations.

I responded:

 (AI = Annex 1 (developed countries) and NAI = Non-Annex I (developing countries):

'Simple carbon offsetting without the attendant co-benefits would be morally flawed. However, one needs to recall (and this gets lost in the noise around offsetting) that:

 

• The Kyoto mechanisms are supplementary to domestic action by AI.
• While the level of supplementarity has never been agreed, the Marrakesh Accords requires this to the “significant”.
• This means that the idea that AI simply moves the location of its emissions to NAI is incorrect because AI must achieve significant domestic reductions which can be supplemented in respect of the smaller portion of emissions reduction that are not achieved domestically.

 

(Also, have a look at the articles on the Ecosystem Marketplace listed above).

It is instructive to note the level of FDI that has been unlocked by the CDM. Also note that criticism of the CDM tends to be directed at abuses linked to individual projects – this criticism is correct but cannot be extrapolated to maligning the system, as a whole, particular when one takes the whole system into account, including FDI flows and local sustainability requirements. That would be a bit like saying that the whole system established by the SA Constitution needs to be called into question because there are allegations of fraud and abuse of the system by individuals (people municipalities, government departments) within the system.'

  Any comments to the Pope’s Declaration are welcomed.