Environmental Protection as Market Pathology?: Carbon Trading and the Dialectics of the ‘Double Movement’

Abstract

Polanyi's concept of the 'double movement' is frequently interpreted as the opposition between the problematic and unsustainable dynamics o f the market and the benign and normatively desirable reaction against this by 'society'. This paper questions this dualistic interpretation of the double movement and undertakes a problematization o f the Polanyian idea o f social and environmental protection. It does this by revisiting the concept o f the double movement in light o f the recent proliferation o f market-based mechanisms for environmental regulation. Through an exploration o f the different interpretations o f Polanyi's work, the paper presents a dialectical reading o f the double movement that conceptualizes the idea o f social protection within a broader capitalist framework. This is then illustrated with the case o f emissions trading as a particular form of environmental protection. Carbon trading as a mitigation strategy, it is argued, corresponds to the Polanyian idea o f 'social protection'in that its protective potential to reduce emissions is itself constrained by the socioeconomic framework within which it operates. This in turn points to the need for a critique o f climate mitigation efforts that goes beyond a focus on current problems with emissions trading schemes.

On the Nature of the Countermovement: A Response to Stuart et al.’s ‘Climate Change and the Polanyian Countermovement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth?’

“…However, in setting up their case the authors provide an overly optimistic reading of Polanyi that I believe misses a crucial part of his argument, a reading that at least partly explains our differences in opinion. This commentary offers a friendly critique of Stuart et al's use of Polanyi and clarifies the argument in Carton (2014) that the authors take issue with.…”

“…With hindsight we of course know that Polanyi was mistaken, and that the liberal ideology emerged from the War transformed but not diminished. While this hardly means that the supersession of market hegemony is impossible, it does, I believe, point to the need to take serious a more dialectical reading of the double movement (see Carton, 2014;Goodwin, 2018), in which movements of commodification and marketisation are co-constituted by a combination of both progressive and staunchly conservative countermovements. In other words, the ongoing hegemonic position of market relations underlines the significance of a second (b), more reformist conceptualisation of the countermovement.…”

“…Polanyi famously argues that the history of capitalism is characterised by the antagonistic forces of on the one hand commodification, and on the other the self-protective reaction of societal actors against the inevitable negative social and environmental consequences of commodification, what Polanyi calls the 'countermovement'. Stuart et al partly set up their argument as a critique of my own article on the topic (Carton, 2014) to make the point that carbon markets do not constitute a genuine form of such countermovement. By contrast, they argue, a 'real' countermovement looks more like degrowth, which in 'its principles and pathways could guide the re-embedding of energy systems in the socio-natural sphere' (p. 9).…”

Dancing to the Rhythms of the Fossil Fuel Landscape: Landscape Inertia and the Temporal Limits to Market-Based Climate Policy

“…In this it is reminiscent of processes of planned obsolescence that Harvey () deems necessary in order to resolve the tension between the contradicting demands of technological innovation and fixed capital devaluation. The immediate appeal of this approach, in political economic terms, is that it promises the decommissioning of the fossil fuel landscape through a measured and gradual process that avoids the social and economic upheavals that more radical climate change policies would inevitably spur (see also Carton ).…”

Embedding Carbon Markets: Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico's Forests

“…Although a number of scholars have evoked Polanyi's work to broadly describe the dynamics of carbon offsets as fictitious commodities and the role of the state in their regulation (Bumpus and Liverman 2008;Lohmann 2010;Lederer 2012;Carton 2014), fewer have engaged with Polanyi's work to examine the dynamic formation of forest-based carbon markets. As exceptions, Milne (2012) argued that forest carbon is both embedded and a fictitious commodity, with embeddedness best analyzed through both property relations and power dynamics, whereas Osborne (2015) argued that the contradictory outcomes of carbon forestry, particularly changes in land use, reflect Polanyi's insight about the challenges of commodifying nature due to its inextricable links to social and cultural institutions.…”