Marketing and making carbon dumps: Commodification, calculation and counterfactuals in climate change mitigation

Abstract

This article argues that the Kyoto Protocol due to its loopholes, unverifiability, and its inattention to incentives for structural change is incapable of decreasing the upward flow of fossil carbon. However, the Kyoto Protocol has not been entirely a failure. Its successes include its accounting methods and other technical institutions in creating new cultural and political tools for marginalizing certain types of futures and actors.