In the name of carbon

A look at what happens when we aim for a proxy goal, in this case carbon reduction, instead of the overall health of the system.... Spoiler alert: we push the system in the wrong direction.

The world is currently doing a lot, “in the name of carbon.” This article (and potential future ones in a “in the name of carbon” series) are a look at what sometimes happens when we focus too much on a proxy goal, one that doesn’t actually singularly represent the health of the wider system.

For example, we sometimes over focus on test scores as a means of determining if our education system is working or not. We have probably all seen what happens when we do that: the goal becomes the test scores, not the health of the overall education system and the overall results. We laser focus on test results, overlooking other indicators like student and educator mental health, deprioritizing un-testable (or harder to test) mindsets and skill-sets such as empathy and belonging, and focusing on the proxy itself as if it were the goal.

Carbon reduction is the “test scores” issue for the environment. When we focus on test scores, above all else, we fail our students and our education systems fail. When we focus on carbon reduction, above all else, we fail the environment, and ourselves in the process. Donella Meadows called it “backwards intuition” and Jay Forrester talked about everyone “trying very hard to push [systems leverage points] IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!” – something we humans tend to do when we try to “solve” a symptom, and inadvertently create new ones.¹ You can’t solve a symptom. You can contribute to shifting a system to get different results, but you can’t do that by focusing on a proxy goal that doesn’t reflect the system as a whole or else, you do typically end up doing what Donella Meadows & Jay Forrester warned about so many years ago: pushing the system in the wrong direction.

Here are some stories, from a systems perspective, of where we are doing just that, “in the name of carbon.”

(Some of the thinking credit in this series goes to Anna Johnson & James Stauch in our work together for The 55 Minutes and other material.)

Photo by Tim Roosjen on Unsplash

Marine Geoengineering

“In 2012, a flurry of emails, accessed through Freedom of Information requests, drifted between managers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada. Seemingly nonplussed officials warned colleagues that a controversial California businessman named Russ George, along with the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation (HSRC), was planning to dump iron dust in the international waters off Haida Gwaii. According to the emails obtained, George was promising to provide the Haida Nation with millions of dollars in revenue from selling carbon credits, along with the restoration of depleted salmon runs.”

This excerpt from a 2024 article in The Walrus titled, “As Temperatures Rise, So Does Pressure to Engineer the Ocean”² explores existing and proposed marine geoengineering projects, like adding “magnesium hydroxide to the waters of St. Ives Bay, a picturesque crescent on England’s south west peninsula, via a wastewater pipe” described as an “antacid for the sea.” The idea with marine geoengineering projects is to capture carbon through different means, either by altering the ocean chemistry or by fueling the growth of certain plant or animal life in the ocean. “Ocean fertilization” provides one source of potential increase in carbon capture. But, as we likely all already know, fertilization of soil has been a learning curve for humans, often causing more harm than good. We are now entering that learning curve with the ocean, but hopefully we can use some of our past soil oversights to avoid ocean missteps.

Ocean exploration “in the name of carbon” is complex:

- The deep ocean contains some of the last unexplored areas of the planet - ecosystems we don’t yet fully understand. Some scientists are concerned that the ocean floor might be more essential to the collective health of the planet, and more fragile, than we are currently giving it credit for. Trying to shift those deep ocean ecosystems through chemical or plant shifts in order to create carbon capture mechanisms might (or might not) impact our carbon challenge. But it might also lead to other problems we don’t yet understand. In that same Walrus article, a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lisa Levin, expresses her concern that many characterize the ocean floor “as a featureless space” when in reality it is not. She noted that when she attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 28, she listened to many sessions about ocean carbon capture technologies but “Nobody was talking about environmental risk.” The article touches on some of the potential treats, noting “Tonnes of seaweed or forestry waste dropped on the sea floor could smother life there; alkaline material spread on the surface could change the flow of light and ocean chemistry, affecting the larval stages of ocean critters; iron fertilization could exacerbate ocean acidification and deoxygenation by enhancing algal decay.”

- Regulation and authority far into the ocean is nebulous. Who gets to make decisions about what is put into our oceans far off shore? Is it adequately covered by the Law of the Sea, and if so, can it be properly enforced?

- Financial incentives are skewing the focus and could potentially incentivize riskier behavior than if the efforts were for purely altruistic means. It is one thing to argue, “Our planet needs help, so we are going to try some new mechanisms of carbon capture in order to contribute to our collective well-being.” If that was the only motivating factor to enter this market, you would imagine that, hopefully, these practices would be well researched and regulated, as the goal would simply be to see if they did indeed support overall environmental health. It could then be assumed that they would only be deployed if there was significant indications that the positive impacts would outweigh the negative ones. But, unfortunately, that is not the only motivating factor for entering this market.

The Carbon Market

The global carbon trading market will likely surpass one trillion dollars by the end of 2024.³ In addition, according to the World Bank’s annual “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2024” report, public carbon tax revenues reached a record $104 billion.⁴

This is big money. When big dollar sign numbers are anywhere, we need to look out for a mismatch of incentives and outcomes. We have seen this with the amount people are willing to pay to adopt a baby leading to the creation of adoption “markets” in many countries (often unbeknownst by the parents seeking babies to adopt).⁵ Many countries, like Cambodia and most recently, China as of late 2024, have now banned international adoptions.⁶ Even small amounts of money can incentivize harmful behavior. When I worked in Cambodia, an organization started a girls’ education fund, providing school fees for any family that had pulled their daughters out of school in order to cover the fees to put them back in. What happened? You guessed it: parents who had previously kept their girls in school started pulling their girls out, hoping to get access to the free school fees. Misaligned financial incentives can cause systems to be pushed in the opposite direction of the stated goal.

As we expand into marine geoengineering where the level of carbon capture is quite literally and figuratively a “blue ocean”, there could be a gold-rush type mentality with regards to the finances available from carbon capture. Added to this are many new deep seabed mining explorations, partly driven by the growth in electric vehicles (EVs).⁷ As noted, “Much of the interest in carbon removal is already driven by private interests—many carbon removal start-ups, including those operating in Canada, are funded in part by the sale of carbon offsets.” In other words, people and organizations are making money off of carbon capturing. These are “private interests” that stand to make money, potentially LOTS of money, if they can capture a large part of this market. This misalignment of incentives could push the system in the opposite direction (aka - away from health) if risk-seeking behavior in search of financial gain incentivizes poor research and poor transparency about these efforts. Even without the looming expansion of carbon capture into our oceans, flaws in how the carbon capture market currently operates are being exposed.⁸ One argument is that there is not enough regulation and little oversight or monitoring, meaning some people are making money, even when the carbon capture is not working as well as they claim.

The Walrus article about engineering the ocean touches on these systemic challenges of the broader for-profit carbon market, noting there is an obvious “moral hazard in carbon removal, in that it could offer an excuse to continue emitting.”⁹ Indeed, some research suggests that carbon credit funding hasn’t merely provided an excuse to continue emitting: In some cases, it has incentivized people to emit more, simply to make the funds from off-setting it.

Here is an example of how that wild misalignment of incentives works. For context, even though the market is often referred to as the “carbon market,” the credit schemes to reduce greenhouse gases don’t just include carbon dioxide.¹⁰ The greenhouse gas triflouromethane (or HFC-23), a powerful greenhouse gas, is “a byproduct in the manufacturing of refrigerant for air conditioners and feedstocks for high performance plastics and the manufacturing of Teflon.”¹¹ Unfortunately, there is a mismatch and the value of the credit is “too profitable, and the sale of carbon credits generated from HFC-23 offsetting has become far more valuable than its production for other purposes. Manufacturers of HFC-23, responding to the market demand for credits, started producing it just to offset it. Researchers at Stanford University have calculated that, as a result, payments to refrigerant manufacturers and carbon market investors by governments and compliance buyers for HFC-23 credits has exceeded $4.7 billion when the costs of merely abating HFC-23 would have been about $100 million - a major manipulation of the market.”¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Carbon Pipelines

The ocean is not the only place we are experimenting with risky carbon capture, in the name of the environment, but also to the tune of plentiful carbon credit funds. One with direct risk to humans that is being rolled out across both the US and Canada, is carbon dioxide pipelines. They are essentially long pipelines where carbon dioxide is pumped in at very high pressure, pushing a lot of gas into a small space. Through the carbon market, those carbon pipelines can create ongoing revenues, not just from carbon credits, but also by pumping the carbon dioxide to places to be used as a fuel. Ironically, the gas is often pumped to oil fields where it is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a process where CO2 is injected into oil fields to increase oil production according to the BGS - British Geological Survey. However, it's important to note that while EOR can increase oil production, it also means more oil is burned, potentially offsetting the emissions reductions from carbon capture.¹⁶ ¹⁷

Yes, you read that correctly. Carbon dioxide is pumped into pipelines. Companies and people, those who are already wealthy enough to create such infrastructure, make lots of money for doing this “in the name of carbon” capture. That captured carbon is often then pumped to be used to drill more oil. And doing so can end up releasing MORE carbon. All… you guessed it, “in the name of carbon.” (There are very few times where I feel an expletive like WTF is warranted, but this might be one of them.)

What is even worse is that this pressurized carbon is, literally, a zombie apocalypse waiting to happen. It’s carbon dioxide in high pressure! So, what happens if (or when, as it already has) a pipeline breaks? A huge cloud of carbon dioxide, up to a mile wide or more, is released. Cars can’t run. More importantly, people can’t breathe. What we are doing “in the name of carbon” really is pretty insane, but this might be some of the craziest.

In 2020 there was a carbon pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi where a cemented part of the pipeline ruptured due to shifting ground from excessive rain. Pressurized CO2 rolled through a rural community, making it nearly impossible to breathe. An NPR article on the explosion notes, “at least 45 people were hospitalized. Cars stopped working, hobbling the emergency response. People lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe. First responders didn't know what was going on. ‘It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse,’ says Jack Willingham, emergency director for Yazoo County.”¹⁸

The US clearly has very divided politics right now, but, in my opinion, we shouldn’t be divided on this: the things we do in the name of the environment should be a) proven to help the environment, or at least being well vetted and monitored to try to see if there is proof, b) not a financial conflict of interest, and c) safe. Of course, this is complex, we need to make changes and sometimes that requires risks, which invites complexity like who gets to decide what is “safe enough.” In this case, it feels like the financial incentives are so incredibly misaligned and the risks are so incredibly high that we are perhaps rolling the dice on a way too risky proposal. And this isn’t just a small concept, carbon pipelines are being proposed across the US, and in other countries as well.

In an article in The Narwhal called Pathways Alliance’s Oil and Carbon Capture Project Won’t Undergo Alberta Environmental Assessment, Sharon J. Riley and Carl Meyer share their findings about this growing practice.¹⁹ The 16 billion dollar carbon capture project includes a proposed 400-kilometre carbon dioxide pipeline. Carbon dioxide from the oil sands will be pressurized and pumped underground into the pipeline and, as The Narwhal notes “The project aims to bury 10 to 12 megatonnes of carbon dioxide deep underground each year, roughly equivalent to the carbon pollution emitted by the oil sands every six weeks.” A coalition of First Nations and environmental organizations requested the government conduct an environmental assessment of the project, but the Alberta Energy Regulator declined “based on the current information about the project.”

I repeat: Yes, the energy regulator decided NOT to conduct an assessment of this project – and local lives are at risk for something that hasn’t even been proven to be environmentally sound.

Local residents do not agree with this decision. According to the Narwhal article, “they are concerned groundwater is at risk and that an explosion or a leak could mean asphyxiation caused by odourless, invisible carbon dioxide.” Their concerns are not unfounded. While The Narwhal skews left, concern crosses the political spectrum: In a campaign video available on YouTube and other platforms called The Pipeline Deception, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr shared the residents of Iowa’s concerns about a similar pipeline that was proposed to go through private farmland. It highlights authentic concerns about the creeping of private interests into the “eminent domain laws” previously only mobilized for public works projects. The people of Iowa are also concerned about their safety. As they note in the video when talking about the pipeline, “We know that there are ruptures and we know that there are leeks.”²⁰ It includes 911 audio recording of people driving into the carbon dioxide cloud created by the Satartia, Mississippi pipeline rupture. You hear the ambulance drivers’ speech deteriorate as they loose oxygen to their brains and you hear interviews of people who are now permanently living on oxygen tanks because of that explosion. It’s pretty intense.

The campaign video, and other efforts, seem to have worked, as in December 2024, at least one of the controversial Iowa pipelines was cancelled.²¹ Clearly, for the people of Iowa, whose land was being threatened by eminent domain law, this is a big issue. I have been following this work over the past year, and I am shocked that this isn’t a bigger conversation outside of those areas in the US. In our polarized country, there is a narrative from “the left” that “the right” is anti-environment. I teach in a Masters of the Environment program and I hear it all the time. Yet, here we have multi-generational farmers in Iowa, a population that generally votes to the right, who are fighting to keep the farm land they are stewarding, which is being threatened not only “in the name of carbon” but by carbon “reduction” projects that have the potential to not only increase oil extraction and carbon, but also potentially to kill them! “The right” is using it in campaign videos and “the left” isn’t even talking about it, or in many cases, even aware of it. If I were those farmers, who speak in that video about caring deeply for both the land and for their families, I would likely be inclined to vote right too.

These conversations need to start crossing divides. As an educator though, it is certainly hard to get my very left leaning Masters of the Environment students to watch a video that supports Trump, even if it is about an important issue that we, as a society, should certainly to be discussing, regardless of political affiliation. (The fact that we think we can even be “masters” of the environment appears to be part of the problem here. Perhaps the environment should be our master, not the other way around!) We call someone a conspiracy theorist, or we don’t like their politics, so then we refuse to listen to their message, even if the message itself is something we might agree with. But if “our” side isn’t talking about a certain message, and we refuse to listen to anyone from “the other side”- then we miss out about learning about important issues we need to know about, for our health, and the health of the planet.

The polarity of the country right now makes it so hard for people to want to listen across divides, and that only further solidifies those divides. Therefore, our problems are not only what we are doing, sometimes perhaps unjustly, “in the name of carbon” but also what we are not listening to, in the name of “our side.”

We do it anyway…

Back to the article about the “controversial California businessman” who wanted to dump iron dust in the international waters off Haida Gwaii, Canada. “As you know, all of this is very dubious, right from the science to the ability to actually obtain credits,’ wrote one fisheries manager. More to the point, Environment Canada staff said they had warned the company that the dumping was illegal; it violated the terms of the London Convention/London Protocol, an international treaty on marine pollution which regulated dumping at sea, except for authorized experiments. The company did not have a permit, yet the project went ahead anyway; in July of 2012, HSRC spread roughly 100 tonnes of iron sulfate around 370 kilometres off the west coast of Canada.”

All this, “in the name of carbon” and a claim that we are protecting the environment. All this fueling a political divide where one side thinks they are the only side that is “pro-environment” yet most aren’t aware of, or willing to listen to, another side that is screaming that what we are doing “in the name of carbon” is sometimes not only unjust, but also dangerous, and perhaps at times, corrupt. When the stated goals are seriously misaligned with the incentives we are, once again, perhaps simply aiming for a proxy which should never have been our main goal. First it was test score, now it’s carbon. It’s time we are ALL up in arms about this as this shouldn’t be a polarizing political issue – it should be a complex cross-divide conversation about the health of our planet and our people. And it needs to be discussed, now, no matter where or why you vote. Or else, we’ll keep on keeping divided, all “in the name of carbon.”

What else are we doing “in the name of carbon” that you think should be discussed? Share in the comments.

1. https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

2. Moira Donovan, "As Temperatures Rise, So Does Pressure to Engineer the Ocean," The Walrus, June 6, 2024, updated June 10, 2024, https://thewalrus.ca/engineer-the-ocean/.

3. Susanna Twidale, “Global carbon markets value hit record $949 bln last year - LSEG,” Reuters, Feb. 12, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/global-carbon-markets-value-hit-record-949-bln-last-year-lseg-2024-02-12/

4. World Bank Group, "Global Carbon Pricing Revenues Top a Record $100 Billion," World Bank, May 21, 2024, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/05/21/global-carbon-pricing-revenues-top-a-record-100-billion.print

5. Nicolò Tissier, “International Adoptions in Cambodia, the Ghost of Illegalities,” Cambodianess, February 17, 2023, https://www.cambodianess.com/article/international-adoptions-in-cambodia-the-ghost-of-illegalities.

6. Helen Davidson, “China Says It Is Ending Foreign Adoptions, Prompting Concern From Us,” The Guardian, February 6, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/china-ending-foreign-adoption-international-intercountry

7. “Over 700 marine scientists and policy experts from forty-four countries have called for a pause on exploitation until the potential impacts can be understood, and at least eighteen major multinational companies, including Google, Philips, and EV manufacturers BMW, Volvo, and Volkswagen, support a global moratorium.” Chrisopher Pollon. ‘How Much Further Can Mining Go?’ The Walrus, (Nov. 22,

2023). https://thewalrus.ca/how-much-further-can-mining-go/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=

When+Britney+and+Pamela+and+Paris+Tell+All&utm_campaign=weekly

8. Benjamin K. Sovacool, "Four Problems with Global Carbon Markets: A Critical Review," Energy & Environment 22, no. 6 (2011): 681–94, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43735038.

9. Donovan, "As Temperatures Rise.”

10. Benjamin K. Sovacool, “Four Problems With Global Carbon Markets: A Critical Review.” Energy & Environment 22, no. 6 (2011): 681–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43735038.

11. Benjamin K Sovacool and Marilyn A Brown, “Scaling the Policy Response to Climate Change,” Policy and Society 27, no. 4 (2009): 317–328, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polsoc.2009.01.003

12. Sovacool, “Four Problems With Global Carbon Markets.”

13. Michael Wara, "Is the Global Carbon Market Working?" Nature 445, no. 7128 (2007): 595-596, https://doi.org/10.1038/445595a

14. Michael Wara and David G. Victor, “A Realistic Policy on International Carbon Offsets,” Working Paper, No. 74 (Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Stanford University, April 1, 2008), https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/publication/258646/doc/slspublic/Wara%20Victor%20Realistic%20Policy.pdf

15. Ben Person, "Market Failure: Why the Clean Development Mechanism Won't Promote Clean Development," Journal of Cleaner Production 15, no. 2 (2007): 247–252, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2005.08.018.

16. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2025/ee/d5ee01752a

17. https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/climate-change/carbon-capture-and-storage/

18. Julia Simon, “ The U.S. Is Expanding Co2 Pipelines. One Poisoned Town Wants You To Know Its Story,” NPR, September 26, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/05/21/1172679786/carbon-capture-carbon-dioxide-pipeline.

19. Sharon J. Riley and Carl Meyer, "Pathways Alliance’s Oilsands Carbon Capture Project Won’t Undergo Alberta Environmental Assessment," The Narwhal, October 30, 2024, updated October 31, 2024, https://thenarwhal.ca/pathways-alliance-carbon-capture-project/.

20. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "The Pipeline Deception," YouTube video, 26:08, October 9, 2024,

21. https://pipelinefighters.org/news/victory-for-landowners-wolf-carbon-solutions-withdraws-co2-pipeline-project-application-at-iowa-utilities-commission/#:~:text=FOR%20IMMEDIATE%20RELEASE:%20December%202,for%20proceeding%20on%20the%20Project.