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The Golden Path
Oh, this shit is funny!
Offset is a platform that aims to generate high integrity, premium carbon credits from industrial sabotage and direct actions. At the heart of our work is an innovative new methodology for quantifying the climate benefits of political actions that publically disrupt carbon flows.
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Our Approach
Carbon offsets apply the logic of capitalism to atmospheric interactions. This logic assumes that all activities on earth can be quantified and abstracted, and therefore exchanged. Offsets produce the capacity to outsource the effects of one’s consumption—at the scale of the individual, the corporation, or even the nation state—to someone, somewhere else, even to the generations of the future. In short, many existing carbon offset markets act to maintain a status quo rather than address root causes of the climate catastrophe.
In contrast, the Offset platform includes a registry of alternative offsets that focus on social exchanges and political actions in order to contribute to a program of highly financialized radical change.
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Institutional Support
Offset (version 0.1) was commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, for Data Relations.
As the resident black cat, I support this.
Edward Abbey knew what he was about.
Sabotage does not cause “avoided emissions”, those products are still going to be made in a different factory, PLUS additional CO2 emissions to repair sabotage.
It’s like claiming you stopped clear cut logging by burning down the forest.
I think you might be reading a bit too much into the joke, which is the idea of a scientific paper on giving carbon credits to people conducting actual industrial sabotage, a hilarious concept in itself.
But taking it more seriously, I suppose the argument could be made that delaying large amounts of carbon from being released means reducing X amount of time that carbon in the atmosphere has to contribute to warming and potential feedback cycles. Producing something in a different factory may take time, and while the same amount would potentially be emitted at the new factory, delaying it may not be entirely useless (at least, in my uneducated intuition!).
There are too many variables to know with absolute certainty if a particular sabotage action is overall carbon positive or negative based on how much extra carbon would be emitted to fix the sabotage (depends on the type of sabotage). But if the sabotage results in that production not occurring at all due to making the whole ordeal more costly, it would likely be overall a positive carbon action.
I checked the publication date and it was not April 1, so I assume they’re serious.
You might want to take a look at the About page, and their Disclaimer at the bottom:
Notice and disclaimer from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art:
This digital commission is an artwork which has been supported by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) to link from this website, but remains the property and ultimate responsibility of the commissioned artists.
ACCA acknowledges the value of direct action and political activism. We note that this project is a speculative artwork and provocative intervention into the carbon offset economy. As an organisation, we do not promote illegal activities. ACCA does not make any guarantees, representations or warranties in respect to this artwork, including in relation to quality, operability or data security and has no responsibility or liability for any loss, damage, cost or expense you might incur if you interact with this project, including arising from any data breach, virus or other contamination.
That it looks like a real paper is part of the joke, it’s pointing out the absurdity of companies trying to continue to emit carbon as long as they can use carbon credits, which doesn’t address the root problem. The joke of the paper is essentially; what if a researcher who was paid by a mega corp to find a ‘solution’ (which the corp would want to be greenwashing), actually naively proposed a genuine solution using corporate friendly concepts and language.
Wow humans are limited to one day per year to make all satire, parody and humor?
Yes that’s exactly what I said 🤡
The joke is that “carbon offset” credits are a lie and a fraud, because like you said if there is demand for something it will be produced no matter what.
That factory is likely already at capacity and might have to re-tool machines to accommodate a different product, as well there might not be another factory as maybe the sabotage is a crude oil pipeline and sabotaging it effectively halts the operation until repairs are made. Sure some carbon will be released doing those repairs, but that would likely be far less then any ghg’s released during normal operation.
Also, burning down the forest before it can be clear cut could actually be a good idea. The British Columbian wildfires of 2022 were likely caused by excessive forest preservation by putting out any and all wildfires for decades upon decades. This made the forests virtual tinderboxes with all that extra undergrowth. Forest fires are a natural process, so causing one to prevent clear cutting is again arguably better then the clear cut, environmentally speaking.
