Prior to the Protestant Reformation, many European Christians believed that they could buy their way out of punishment in the afterlife. It was reputed that some sellers of indulgences used the jingle, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
As much as that was a caricature of Christian faith, there were worse practices.
For example, a murderer subject to a punishment of seven-years fasting could have it all over in three days by paying a number of other people to fast on his behalf.
The idea that we can absolve ourselves of our wrongdoing by paying others to suffer for us seems corrupt, ineffective, and somewhat comical.
Indeed, in medieval times, instead of being a way of rectifying wrongdoing and dissuading people from sinning again, “proxy penance” seemed to simply be a licence for wealthy people to keep up their wrongdoing.
Delegating Environmental Responsibilities to Others
We are told that we can cover up our “environmental sins” by purchasing carbon credits, by paying special taxes and levies, and by sending our waste off for recycling.The futility of it all came into sharp focus recently. The recycling business REDcycle was meant to have been collecting soft plastics from Australia supermarkets for the purpose of recycling them. But shoppers can now see signs in supermarkets saying that collections of plastics have stopped.
The deeper issue, though, is consumer behaviour.
The promise of recycling lured people into a false sense of environmental responsibility because they thought that other people were taking on their burdens.
That mindset was highlighted by a study that showed that, after Germany initiated a deposit-return scheme for single-use plastic bottles, the use of those bottles actually increased in comparison to reusable (and more environmentally friendly) glass bottles.
That is, “these initiatives potentially increase waste rather than preventing it.”
This issue affects plastics, but it is also a factor in carbon credits. Passengers on a jet may pay for credits to make their flight “carbon neutral.”
But what is really happening? The jet still spews huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. But, by the miracle of carbon credits, the airline pays a broker, who sub-contracts a carbon credit manager, who then pays a farmer in a remote area to pay for some workers to plant some trees that will ideally absorb our flight’s carbon emissions.
It would be reasonable to be sceptical of carbon credits. The trees purchased with those credits are located thousands of miles away, and hardly available to effective scrutiny.
Perhaps the story that best sums up the danger of putting faith in credits was when the Catholic Church fell victim to a carbon scam. The Vatican Climate Forest was meant to offset the Vatican’s carbon emissions.
Environmental protection is a worthy cause. But the way money is spent and resources are used nowadays is cause for concern.
The medieval Christian church was corrupted by people who thought they could convince others to spend their way into righteousness. So too, many of today’s environmental initiatives do not encourage people to do the right thing, but instead encourage people to pay for others to take on their “guilt.”
In some cases, these initiatives actually make things worse.
If we don’t change our own conduct but instead pay others to bear our burdens, it seems that we have learned nothing from history and instead are making the same mistakes again.
Are environmental initiatives really a way of protecting our environment? Or are they just licences to keep polluting.
It seems that we will find the answer if we “follow the money.”
