A social life for carbon? Commodification, markets and care

Unlike the wishes of many – or the prognostications of some – the ‘privatisation of everything’ (Watts 1994) has yet to be a fait accompli. And, indeed, this is even true in the continuing hotbed of neoliberal capitalism that is the USA, whereby efforts to instantly develop one of the largest markets in recent history – in the form of purchasable, own-able and trade-able carbon dioxide emissions – was successfully buried under the faux-populist tide of the Tea Party. Cap and trade was turned into shouts of ‘Cap and Tax!’ by the likes of Sarah Palin, her fellow Mama Grizzlies and other Tea Party minions – in conjunction with a rather compliant US media – and the jig was up. Clearly, much of the writing on capitalism and nature, and the nature of (neoliberal) capitalism argues that commodification, privatisation and the ‘enrolment’ of nature into these processes is anything but complete, uncontested, straightforward or even (e.g. Mansfield 2008; Smith 1984; Castree 2003 2010a 2010b; McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Antipode 2010; Bakker and Bridge 2006). Yet this death knell for a carbon market in the USA is at least somewhat interesting given that many calling for its head were arguably to the right of Reagan/Thatcher and/or at least nominally libertarian, if the continuous mouthing of the phrases ‘free markets’ and ‘freedom to choose’ counts as a form of libertarianism in contemporary America. The Tea Party cry of ‘get big government out of the way’– and the specific government, big or small, fronted by the likes of Obama – suggests an unwillingness to understand that so-called free markets and consumer choice fundamentally depend on governments for their functionality and very existence; but what this also suggests is that for many, even the magic of the (carbon) market is now too much regulation in this tide of extreme libertarianism which is very much one part Social Darwinism married to two (even stronger) parts (anti-environmental) corporatism. In short, in a continuing era of the Thatcherite ‘there is no alternative’ to markets and neoliberal, consumer capitalism1, the fascinating situation whereby carbon markets were successfully pitched as too alternative has, at least for the time being, left them to the wayside of both the roll back and roll out of a neoliberalist project designed to mitigate climate change. The growing ‘carbon economy’ is anything but ‘normalised’ (cf. Boykoff et al. 2009; see also Boyd et al. in press; Theory, Culture and Society 2010; Environment and Planning A 2009) across different spatial and socio-economic circumstances and contexts and especially now in the grip of US-led Tea Party-ism. At about the same time that the creation of carbon markets in the USA was being torpedoed, a more ‘real’ aspect of the carbon economy literally gushed to the forefront of the media stage in the form of BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe (Steinberg 2011). Obviously, not ‘too big to fail’ like the financial institutions which are even now riding high on infusions of public cash, BP senior managment gave off the impression that it was not only ‘too big to have to care’– or better yet too connected to care – about the spill, it and the other set of corporate players involved in the leak were ‘too big to have to do’ much of anything. If a well cap or ‘infusion’ of golf balls and rubble in the form of a ‘top kill’ would not work then perhaps the ocean would be able to break down the oil on its own and the environment would heal itself from our meddling yet again. Nature's agency indeed. But more specifically, the ‘too big to have to care or do’ arguments were breathlessly implied at the time in the continuing connections made between the fate of BP's stock portfolio and that of poor pensioners in the UK; something like one in six pounds of all dividend payments made to UK pension funds is paid out by BP (The Independent 2010)2. These arguments were also more forcefully and explicitly articulated by the likes of US politicians and Fox News pundits through their framing narratives that argued that making BP (or British Petroleum as some American observers noted, including President Obama) pay for their mess was akin to an inexcusable ‘shakedown’ of the corporation (Thinkprogress.com 2010a). For others, such as the Governor of Texas, the spill was simply an act of God; as he put it, ‘From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented’ (Sherman 2010). Divine intervention indeed. Yet, care BP did, if the public relations blitz it mounted was any indication of its desire to be e/affective in dealing with the broken well. From hiring guards to keeping reporters off beaches and out of the skies in investigating claims about the extent and clean-up efforts of the spill, to the corporation's internet, newspaper and television campaigns vowing to ‘make it right’ in the Gulf, to the blundering former CEO, Tony Hayward, who only really cared enough to lament that he did not take drama lessons in preparation for a ‘hostile’ US public (Thinkprogress.com 2010b). In commenting during his short mea culpa media tour around the UK for the well blow out that killed 11 workers and can now be counted as one of the worst global environmental ‘accidents’ in history, he had this to say: Embarrassingly we found ourselves having to improvise on prime-time TV and slap bang in the middle of the glare of the global media. Our efforts involved amazing feats of engineering – tasks completed in days that would normally take months, numerous major innovations with lasting benefits. But because every move was scrutinised around the world, what the public thought they saw was fumbling and incompetence . . . For me perhaps the most shattering reflection was just how much havoc can be wreaked by a single accident in one small part of a giant company's operations – an accident moreover that all our corporate deliberations had told us simply could not happen . . . For BP this was the ultimate low-probability, high-impact event – a black swan to borrow a term used in the financial crisis. Black swans – or better yet, blackened human bodies, pelicans, frogs, shrimp, wetlands, oceans, etc. – indeed. And what is even more worrying is that much of this was prefigured three years before by an animated film. In The Simpsons movie, after Homer creates his own environmental ‘accident’ by pouring toxic waste into the local lake, a dome of gigantic proportions is planted over the whole town of Springfield by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop the further pollution of the surrounding countryside. While as much a commentary on the over-reach of the government in its ability to quarantine an entire town with impunity, the decision and actions of the EPA were nonetheless decisive and swift and, most importantly, performed to the auspices of a contingency plan put in motion by a cartoon president and federal regulatory agency. Rather than being decisive and swift in terms of its PR, which BP unequivocally was, its CEO and regulators would have been well served learning from The Simpsons movie: ‘accidents’ do happen, even if caused by a yellowed dunce like Homer rather than shoddy safety measures and poor (and captured) regulatory oversight, and ‘contingencies’ can be something quite useful to plan for. So, as the wide and whacky post-political world of environmental politics begins to take hold in contemporary societies (Swyngedouw 2010), strange things are afoot and – in the spaces of a deepening global recession, increasing inequalities and the slippery cultural political economies of climate change – we seemingly only have more uncertainty in store for us. What is overtly less uncertain, however, is that, in the specific realm of climate change and its mitigation and adaptation, any direction things may take is fully and unequivocally underpinned, guided by and embedded with normative concerns, precepts and (possible) outcomes. And, this is most certainly true, as the papers in this themed section argue, in the decision to ‘confront’ climate change through market mechanisms: these decisions and actions are fundamentally characterised by an ethical and moral grounding of what is ‘right’, ‘good’ and ‘better’ in terms of what to do about climate change, its management and mitigation, its scientific networks and judgements and the current and future prospects of its impacts. So, in essence, there is much to be had of the ‘norm-isations’ entrenched in and constructing the carbon economy in parallel to debates about its normalisation or, indeed, ‘un-normalisation’ if the Tea Party has its way. For example, with Deepwater Horizon, much debate centred on questioning if BP was doing the ‘right’ things to deal with the leak, if indeed these were even ‘good’ or if, perhaps, there might be ‘better’ ways to power human societies through a green economy. In addition, the notion of ‘responsibility’ was aired in numerous and often very conflicting ways in conjunction with BP and its role in the leak: BP has a responsibility to its shareholders but also (maybe?) to the environment and local communities (or not), regulators failed in their responsibility to hold the company to even minimal safety standards, and that ‘corporate social responsibility’ should not/should be ostensibly a PR section of BP and other companies' annual reports. Responsibility – who should be required to do the right/good thing – also played out in the debates over carbon markets in the USA. In accordance with the explicit ethico-moral stance of the Palin-ites, Americans have absolutely no responsibility to deal with climate change past, present or in the future. The three papers in this themed section engage with a number of concerns related to the ethics and moralities of carbon markets. Coming out of a workshop held in Oxford in the summer of 2007 on philosophical and social science approaches to the commoditisation of carbon, they all explore the embedded ethical modalities of carbon markets from different perspectives, sometimes related, sometimes not, and they all make use of different theoretical traditions and styles to argue their points. As editors, we feel that this diversity – as a hallmark of this journal (Dodds 2010) – is one of the strengths of this collection: from a number of varied and at times seemingly conflicting angles and positions they open up debates about carbon markets designed to as the had it, one of the most market of all time in the of climate change. the papers explore not only the and the growing market for carbon but the more processes of the of carbon through its and the science to the and of these markets and the philosophical on which is and before to a short of the papers we a of the history of carbon the of carbon and the of care and responsibility in these markets as a to not only the papers in this themed section but to also open up further of debate in the politics of the carbon economy. to climate change is a of market to an of market power and an of in this the is to markets but to act to through other of or regulation this we have the of the These market to to with their emissions in a the in the of from to through that from to in for emissions has not in a however, but is a part of a history of the of environmental The of this of the as back as who in that from any in nature the too for the . . . might a very high (cf. 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