Historical perspective on carbon offsets

This paper examines how carbon offsets evolved through the marketisation of the environment and became one of the primary policies for climate action.Carbon offsets allow firms and individuals to compensate for their emissions by buying reductions from other places, mainly the Global South.The paper argues that carbon offsets is a distinct form of environmental marketisation, created to establish a global market in carbon emissions and to allow trading outside of the cap in traditional capand-trade markets.By using Michael Freeden's notion of 'thin ideologies' and John S. Dryzek's environmental discourse 'economic rationalism' the paper expands on the core concepts used by offset proponents to explain and legitimise offsetting.These concepts display how the application of offsetting changed from its birth in air pollution control to its later use in climate control through the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol.