AUTHOR=Carton Wim , Lund Jens Friis , Dooley Kate TITLE=Undoing Equivalence: Rethinking Carbon Accounting for Just Carbon Removal JOURNAL=Frontiers in Climate VOLUME=3 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.664130 DOI=10.3389/fclim.2021.664130 ISSN=2624-9553 ABSTRACT=

Concerns are increasingly raised over the centrality of carbon removal in climate policy, particularly in the guise of “net-zero” targets. Most significantly perhaps, treating emissions and removals as equivalent obscures emission reductions, resulting in “mitigation deterrence.” Yet the conflation of emission reductions and removals is only one among several implicit equivalences in carbon removal accounting. Here, we examine three other forms—carbon, geographical, and temporal equivalence—and discuss their implications for climate justice and the environmental risks with carbon removal. We conclude that “undoing” these equivalences would further a just response to the climate crisis and tentatively explore what such undoing might look like in practice.