The semiotics of carbon: Atmospheric space, fungibility, and the production of scarcity

Abstract

AbstractAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, greenhouse gases are responsible for climate change, and for this reason, the reduction of these gases' emissions has become one of the main tenets of international climate change policy. Against this backdrop, parties at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change decided that emissions trading would be one of the main instruments to reduce emissions. Through the critical examination of several documents about carbon markets, this article argues that the codification of carbon dioxide as a commodity constitutes a semiotic process that transforms atmospheric space into a more tangible product, providing it with several levels of fungibility. Within this semiotic process, carbon is also fetishized, acquiring a mystic power. While identifying dissonances between the belief in markets' efficiency to solve the problem of climate change and demands for governments to address the problem of excessive supply, this article asserts that carbon's fetishization results in a tautology sustaining carbon markets' existence; that is, the existence of carbon markets becomes an end in itself, independent of their efficiency in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.