Angry in the Great White North

John Oakley of AM 640 Radio in Toronto, writing for the National Post Full Comment blog, points out how the notion of buying carbon offsets sounds a lot like the old idea of indulgences:

Back in the day, the Holy Roman Catholic Church referred to the practice as "buying indulgences," ponying up cash for past or future sins in order to keep oneself in the good graces of those who pedaled redemption.

And where did it get us? Apart from a rebellious Martin Luther leading a Protestant Reformation, we seem not to have learned the lessons of the past. You can't just buy your way out of perdition even though you've paved the road with good intentions.

This week Air Canada announced it is offering it's customers a guilt-free option to reduce the environmental impact of their air travel. Fliers can purchase a carbon credit or "offset" for their trip; about $20 on a return flight, Toronto to London, $40 or so if you fly to Hong Kong. This "green fee" is strictly voluntary … for now.

The idea is the money goes into environmental programs that address the carbon footprint your flight helped enlarge. A tree will grow in B.C. because you took that bourgeois junket to Bangkok. No need to actually address your consumption practices or change your lifestyle. Pay as you play and feel good about yourself while you're doing it. You might even use your points to score more points. Hallelujah! They're back selling self-indulgences.

John has part of it right, but the when you understand how indulgences really worked, the absurdity is even greater than you realize.

An indulgence is not a pre-purchased "free sin" card, paid for in cash, and the size of the payment defining just how much sin you could now get away with. The theory behind indulgences is rather more complex. There is a notion of a Treasury of Merit held in trust by the Church. It is this idea that the Apostles and Saints were so good as Christians, that they were more than good enough to get into Heaven. All that extra goodness could be used to offset the sins of lesser mortals like ourselves. The authority to distribute this excess goodness lies with the Church (note that many Protestant religions also believe in this Treasury of Merit, but deny that any Church has the final authority over it, so disabuse yourself of the notion that this is a uniquely a Roman Catholic idea).

If you commit a sin, but you have already confessed, then you have already been forgiven of your sin. But just because God has granted you His Grace doesn't mean you've paid off the wages of sin. A wrongdoing requires temporal restitution (in the form of penance) and if that is not sufficient, you'll spend time in Purgatory during which the remaining residue of sin is burned off your soul.

That is what an indulgence saves you. You've sinned, you've confessed, and you've been forgiven. But you still have to do time, as it were. An indulgence, if granted by the Church, waives that last obligation.

A lot of theology there (and yes, it seems pretty mystical, but there it is). The thing is, when you understand the actual underpinnings of the theory behind indulgences, then carbon offsets just sound weird.

According to the Church of Green, emitting green house gases is a sin. By buying a carbon offset, you make up for the sin. But despite John Oakley's comparison, that is not how indulgences work. You can't be granted an indulgence for a sin you are about to commit. You can't even be granted an indulgence for a sin that has been committed until you have earned forgiveness for that sin.

So if buying carbon offsets was a sort of indulgence, the Church of Green would have to establish that:

1. it has a Treasury of Green Merit and the authority to manage it
2. a person who has committed a sin of pollution had successfully sought forgiveness for it from the Church of Green
3. the exchange of money is morally equivalent to seeking forgiveness

Of course, this is where it all breaks down.

The practise of granting indulgences is best remembered for when it was abused. When most people think of the abuse of selling indulgences, they think of the way it was done to raise money to pay for the renovation of St Peter's Basilica, which in turn lit the match of the Reformation. In truth, abuses happened before that, and the Church often came down hard on those who corrupted the practise of indulgences both before and after Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg in 1517.

But the approach offered by the Church of Green is fundamentally corrupt. There is no Treasury of Green Merit, nor is there any obligation for the polluter to recognize his polluting ways and be sorry for them. Indeed, the carbon offset is essentially a means of buying the right to pollute, in the same way as indulgences, when abused, were seen as buying the right to sin. Of course, since it is driven by money, the wealthy benefit the most. Indulgences, as they are meant to be granted, are distributed by the Church not on the basis of cash exchange, but to those who have shown true repentance (meaning both sorrow for the sin committed and a commitment not to sin again), and so they encourage sinners to repent and change their ways.

Nothing about the carbon offset indulgence actually discourages polluters. It is likely that the cost of carbon offsets will rise, especially as simple and cheap carbon offset projects grow fewer in number. As the cost goes up, it punishes the poor before they have even polluted by pushing the cost of travel beyond their means. For the wealthy, it means that the airports of the world will be used only by affluent people like themselves, who will see the carbon offset not as encouragement to pollute less, but as a convenient pseudo-tax that keeps the riff-raff out of sight.

So instead of reducing the carbon footprint by putting the brakes on the jetsetting ways of the well-to-do, carbon indulgences are just a form of extra-governmental tax collected by the Church of Green. Or it will be, when the government makes them obligatory. But if and when that happens, it will be the case of a government collecting taxes on behalf of what amounts to a faith. That is not an indulgence, but a tithe. What more, in countries that still practise tithing as managed by the government, churches can be very protective of their money:

Church tax is compulsory in Austria and Catholics can be sued by the Church for not paying it. Anyone who wants to stop paying it has to declare in writing, at their local municipal council, that they are leaving the Church. They are then crossed off the Church registers and can no longer receive the sacraments. The tax amounts to about 1% of the income.

Of course, the Church of Green will insist that we are all members by virtue of being oxygen-breathers.

So John Oakley's comparison is a bit off. There is nothing in the carbon offset that even remotely looks like a proper indulgence. But it sure looks like a tithe. And John Oakley is right when he alludes to the voluntary payment one day becoming obligatory. If that happens, it will be a lot like living back in the Middle Ages. And not just because the Greens will have succeeded at wrecking our economies. But because we'll be forced to pay them for the privilege of letting them do it.