Measure for measure? Commensuration ... - Semantic Scholar

Environment and Planning A 2015, volume 47, pages 000 – 000

doi:10.1068/a130275p

Measure for measure? Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond Mark H Cooper Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 550 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53705, USA; e-mail: [email protected] Received 24 October 2013; in revised form 5 November 2014; published online 8 April 2015 Abstract. The proliferation of markets and market-based policy instruments in environmental governance is premised on the establishment of metrological regimes and the practices of measurement, commensuration, and commodification that underlie these regimes. This paper develops the concept of metrology and examines its role in the function and dysfunction of emissions trading markets. The concept invites us to question the social, political, and scientific conditions under which agreements about measurement and commensuration do or do not occur, and the consequences or effects of particular metrological systems. The paper provides three examples of how measurement, commensuration, and commodification have framed the design and function of emissions markets in order to illustrate the effects of particular metrologies on market rule. Contrary to claims that measurement serves as a means to ‘cool’ political disputes, this paper argues that because markets inevitably have distributional effects, the metrological systems which frame market design are frequently a site of focused political contestation. Seeing measurement and commensuration as inherently political can also provide insight into ongoing disagreements about the appropriate metrics and responsibilities for mitigating climate change and the form and function of markets more generally. Keywords: climate change, commodification, emissions trading, markets, measurement, metrology, science and technology studies

1 Introduction Markets for greenhouse gas emissions rely on the construction of robust rules for measure­ ment, quantification, and accounting before they can function as regulatory instruments. By developing the concept of ‘metrology’ and analyzing its centrality in the making of market rules, in this paper I argue that making markets for emissions trading occurs not through the application of technical knowledge or the resolution of scientific uncertainties, but through the establishment, fixity, and resilience of systems of measurement and commensuration. This attempt to understand the place of metrology in market rules for emissions trading proceeds from attempts to examine markets in nature and the function of measurement, commensuration, and commodification in markets more generally. Attention to the role of metrological systems in market rule can reveal why market design is politically contentious and how metrological systems are central to the distributional effects of markets. The concept of metrology directs attention to the role of measurement and commensuration in the making of market rule. Metrology, in common terms, is the science of measurement. As a practice, it involves determining how things are defined through their attributes and qualities, setting out practices and routines of measurement, establishing commensuration of both biophysical material and social practices, and applying these metrics to induce standardization. Doing ‘critical metrology’, as an analytical approach, directs attention to the

2

M H Cooper

social, political, and scientific conditions under which measurement and commensuration occur as well as the consequences or effects of these processes. While the question of commodification in market-based environmental policies has received a significant amount of attention from researchers (Bakker, 2005; Castree, 2003; 2008; Prudham, 2005; 2007; Robertson, 2007; 2012), the concepts of metrology and metro­ logical regimes offer appreciable insights into how markets—and markets in greenhouse gas emissions permits specifically—are brought into being. While economic geographers have often skirted markets as a primary object of study, recent years have seen the development of several approaches for studying markets (Berndt and Boeckler, 2009; 2011; Lee et al, 2008; Peck, 2012). Fundamental to these are shared precepts of treating markets and marketization as a process, building explanations from grounded empirical inquiries, denaturalizing the form and effects of market rule, and attending to difference and variation at the expense of parsimonious explanations. Importantly for the study of markets as regulatory instruments, markets are also seen as always embedded within particular cultural, social, and political conditions. Hence, they are not just sites of economic relations, but also of governance relations. While regulation is a consequence of all markets, examination of how and by whom markets are regulated is therefore critical for revealing both their origins and their effects. This approach traverses economic geography, nature–society geography, and science and technology studies. It shares many of the precepts of these disciplines’ engagement with markets: namely, attention to markets’ construction through power relations, networks, and organizational structures. It likewise attends to the role of scientific knowledge, technology, and the materiality of the biophysical world, not as unmediated external forces, but as an inherent and essential component of market mechanisms and market forms. I begin this paper by briefly discussing how geographers and others have approached topics relevant to metrology, such as the commodification of nature, the development of markets in greenhouse gas emissions, the practice and effects of quantification, and the formation and influence of standards. In section 3 I discuss the origins of the concept of metrology, review how other fields have used it to explain the ordering of economic and scientific practices, and outline how metrological regimes are made and how their metrics remake the world in turn. Following this, section 4 presents three examples of how measurement and commensuration affect the commodification of greenhouse gas emissions, and section 5 offers a discussion on how doing ‘critical metrology’ reveals the politics of metrology, emissions trading, and climate change mitigation. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on the utility of the concept of metrology for understanding market rule and its potential for analyses of market-based environmental governance and beyond. The construction and reconstruction of markets necessarily entails rival attempts to establish a metrological regime which will structure processes of organization, calculation, and accumulation within the market. Contrary to claims that metrology serves as a means to ‘cool’ political disputes, in this paper I argue that, because markets inevitably have distributional effects, the metrological systems which frame market design are frequently a site of focused political contestation. Seeing measurement and commensuration as inherently political can also provide insight into ongoing disagreements about both the appropriate metrics and responsibilities for mitigating climate change and the form and function of markets more generally. 2 Metrology and market rule(s) Metrology, in common terms, is the science of measurement. While metrology involves both the practice and the outcome of measuring, it is more fundamentally about defining what is to be measured, establishing robust measurement practices, the creation and extension of metrics which guide measurement and produce robust correspondences between things, and

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

3

the establishment of verifiable traceability throughout measurement systems. Applied—or technical—metrology is a component of industrial production that concerns the calibration of measurement devices and the extension of quality control systems for measurements. As a theoretical concept, it invites us to question the social, political, and scientific conditions under which agreements about measurement and commensuration do or do not occur, and the consequences or effects of particular metrological systems. Mallard (1998, page 574) argued that, in both its theoretical and technical guises, “the power of metrological systems lies in their ability to inscribe various forms of equivalence in enduring objects and replicable procedures, allowing for the coordination of several activities.” Within a market, systems of measurement and the creation of equivalence through commensuration result in both commodification (obscuring relations and geographies of production) and commoditization (transforming into undifferentiated products). Under­ standing how measurement is practiced and metrics are produced for the purpose of ‘making things the same’ is an essential component of understanding market rule and its effects.(1) Despite the dearth of attention to the role of measurement and commensuration in making market rule, existing research on the commodification of nature, emissions trading, quantification, and standards provides both a context and an instructive comparison to a metric-centered understanding of markets. Recent scholarship on the commodification of nature and the development of markets for environmental governance has offered important insights into the many ways by which markets encounter ‘nature’. Castree (2003), for example, identifies six aspects of the commodification of nature. Among these, he describes abstraction as “a process whereby the qualitative specificity of any individualized thing … is assimilated to the qualitative homogeneity of a broader type of process” (page 281). Similarly, Prudham (2009, page 129) claims that “commodification actually turns on the apparent dissolution of important qualitative differences in the rendering of distinct things equivalent or commensurable.” Despite the centrality of commodification and marketization to the modern relationship with nature, though, there has been a relative dearth of direct attention to ways in which commodification, commoditization, and marketization rely on measurement and commensuration.(2) Robertson’s work on wetland banking and ecosystem services is a notable exception (2000; 2004; 2006; 2012). He claims that: ““The construction of abstract spaces, the definition of boundaries between types of things that allow nature to be segregated out in a typology, are matters of measure, and have uses far beyond capital. Under capitalism, however, these technologies of measurement and abstraction are used specifically to define adequate bearers of value” (2012, page 388). The pursuit of surplus value may drive some work on the measurement and commodification of nature and this pursuit can direct measurement practices toward particular outcomes; however, measurement, classification, codification, and commensuration are all necessary for a range of environmental management objectives and there are clearly cases for which this pursuit of value is not a principal (or even present) concern. It is therefore necessary to develop an analysis of measurement and commensuration that does not rely on unveiling (1)

 This phrase has been used by both Alder (1998) to refer to the use of precision as a means to create standardized manufactured parts and by MacKenzie (2009) to refer to the calculation of global warming potentials and accountancy standards for emissions units. (2)  Despite Marx’s focus on the commodity form he relegates attention to the measurement of quantity alongside examinations of usefulness. In the first page of the first volume of Capital Marx says “To discover the various uses of things is the work of history. So also is the establishment of sociallyrecognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention” (1867 [1976], page 125).

4

M H Cooper

a subsurface presence of value against which equivalence must be compared and provides analytical openness about where metrological practices sit within causal processes. While there is a now a sizable literature on the politics of climate governance (Bailey and Compston 2010; Bumpus, 2011; Lansing, 2011; 2012; Lohmann, 2005; Newell and Paterson 2010), explicit engagement with issues of measurement and commensuration is much more rare. In their discussion of the commodification of emissions offsets, Bumpus and Liverman (2008, pages 136–137) describe how ““carbon is individuated (separated from its supporting context) involving a discursive and practical cut into the world in order to name discrete chunks of reality that are deemed to be socially useful … . An entity—such as a tonne of carbon—is also functionally and spatially abstracted as an individualized commodity that is assimilated to the qualitative homogeneity of a broader type of process.” Likewise, Gutiérrez (2011) discusses the complexity of establishing a precise and global definition of a ‘forest’ and the negotiations that occurred to make offsets earned from forestbased sequestration fungible with other offsets and Lovell (2014, page 184) analyzes the development of techniques and practices for measurement, reporting, and verification in REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), noting that “the role of science, measurement, and data is central to understanding and controlling forest populations and their carbon content” (page 184). The most notable examples of attention to measurement and commensuration in emissions markets are those by MacKenzie (2009) and Lohmann (2011). Aiming to open up a ‘politics of market design’, MacKenzie identifies the use of ‘global warming potentials’ (GWPs) to establish commensuration between different greenhouse gases and examines the development of accounting standards for trading emissions. In contrast, Lohmann structures his analysis around a series of equations (eg, CO2 reduction in place A = offset in place C) in order to argue that the ‘internalization’ of greenhouse gases and climate change into emissions markets only leads to new externalities and contradictions which then give rise to further simplifications and abstractions which form the basis for future capital accumulation. Practices similar to those of commodification have been identified by the literature on quantification (Asdal, 2011; Desrosières, 1998; Espeland and Stevens, 2008; Miller, 2005; Porter, 1995; Wise, 1995). For example, in Porter’s (1994, page 396) work on the history of quantification, he states that: ““To quantify was necessarily to ignore a rich array of meanings and connotations … . To quantify qualities is to abstract away much of their conventional meaning … . To abstract from a rich complex of meanings is to lift up and preserve what can most easily be controlled and communicated to other specialists in other places.” Likewise, Power (2004, page 767) notes that: ““Much has to be done to render diverse phenomena countable quanta in the first place, namely an abstraction from many specific qualities by establishing categories of similarity. Measurement is based on classification systems that ignore ‘inessential’ differences and reduce complexity.” Despite the existence of this parallel literature on quantification and its consequences for understanding governance, commodification, and markets, geographers have had little engagement with this historical and sociological work. Finally, there exists a sizable and diverse literature on standards and their role in markets (Busch, 2011; Freidberg, 2014; Higgins and Larner, 2010; Star and Lampland, 2009), a thorough review of which is beyond the scope of this paper. Standards are a type of infrastructure that results from the stabilization of rules, specifications, and regulations. As Timmermans and Epstein (2010, page 71) claim, standards “tend to span more than one community of practice

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

5

or activity site … and they are usually backed up by external bodies of some sort, such as professional organizations, manufacturers’ associations, or the state.” While metrology is often used in the creation and development of standards, not all standards begin with measurement and quantification (Friedberg, 2013). The relationship between metrology and standards can also be confused when the term ‘standardization’ is employed: standardization in the metrological sense results in the creation or definition of equivalent things, whereas standardization in the infrastructural sense refers to extending or implementing standards as technical guides or rules. Rather than being an integral component of metrology, then, standards should be considered a related, rather than synonymous, phenomenon (Gregson et al, 2013; Keller et al, 2013; Loconto and Busch, 2010). In the next section I discuss the origins of the concept of metrology, review how it has been used to explain the ordering of economic and scientific practices, and briefly outline how metrological regimes are made and how their metrics remake the world in turn. 3 A genealogy of the concept The first invocation of the theoretical concept of metrology to refer to the terms of scientific practices and the production of commensurability came in Latour’s (1983) “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world.” Latour argued that the strength of scientific claims relied on the closely controlled conditions of the laboratory being extended out into the world, thus enabling the reproduction of scientific practices across diverse spaces and social settings. The development of the International System of Units (SI) was characterized as an exemplary case for this extension. Latour remarked, “People think that the universality of science is a given, because they forget to take into account the size of the ‘metrologie’ ” (page  166). The concept received further discussion (and was Anglicized) in Latour’s Science in Action (1987). While its application remained foremost to universal constants such as time, distance, and energy and the interrelation of systems of measurement for these base constants, this process of extending agreed-upon constants as a necessary precursor to the achievement of scientific certitude is a central metaphor in Latour’s work during this period. Metrology travelled beyond Latour into the worlds of science and technology studies and history of science in the 1990s (Alder, 1995; O’Connell, 1993; Schaffer, 1995; 1999). This work was particularly concerned with attention to the technologies and social practices behind the development of metrological systems. Shapin (1995, page 308) noted the importance of metrology in science and the institutionalization of particular forms of science: ““When all the elements in a network act together to protect an item of knowledge, then that knowledge is strong and we come to call it scientific. The central modern scientific phenomenon to which attention is directed is thus metrology—the development of standards and their circulation around the world.” Callon (1998a; 1998b) effected a significant shift in the use of metrology as a concept. He extended its reach to the economy and economics and identified several functions of metrological systems: that measurement and metrics are a key component in the creation of calculative practices among economic agents, that economic theory acts as a common frame for shaping market institutions, that the concept of economic externalities (a key concept for emissions trading) requires a metrological framework, and that the degree of political contestation about market conditions is both a product and an effect of existing metrological regimes. Callon (1998a, pages 21–22) also recognized that a market transaction is ultimately the commensuration of a commodity and money: ““Money … provides the currency, the standard, the common language which enables us to reduce heterogeneity, to construct an equivalence and to create a translation … .

6

M H Cooper

Money [is] the keystone in a metrological system that is already in place and of which it merely guarantees the unity and coherence.” (3) Further development of the place of measurement in economics was undertaken by Barry and Slater (2002) in their work on the ‘technological economy’. They employed the terms ‘metrological practices’ to refer to the production and reproduction of metrologies and ‘metrological regime’ to refer to an established and stable system. Barry (2002) developed a thorough account of how robust metrological regimes resulted not just in the extension of science deeper into the world, but were capable of producing and remaking economies in their wake. Likewise, Mitchell (2008, page 1119) argued that the concept of economy itself is a product of metrology: ““Metrologies create and stabilize objects; the economy is a very large instance of such an object, with rival attempts to define it and to design tools for measurement and calculation. Rather than assuming there was always an economy, then, we need to explore the rival metrological projects that brought the economy into being.” While the travels of metrology as a concept have, until recently, been constrained to science and technology studies and the history of science, systems which impose legibility, categorization, and rationalization have been identified as a defining characteristic of modernity by a broad range of scholars. For example, Scott (1998, page 21) finds repeated instances of damage done by the imposition of standardizing schemes that set about “dismembering an exceptionally complex and poorly understood set of relations and processes in order to isolate a single element of instrumental value.” (4) Likewise, Desrosières (1998) argues that conventions of measurement and representation in official statistics effect significant transformations in social life despite often being guided by apolitical, if not arbitrary, concerns. Measurement and its effects have also received attention from scholars in political ecology. Robbins (2008, page 206) characterized the issue this way: ““When counting nature, in all of its infinite complexity, what do you count? … in order to govern nature, the state must simplify it, by creating codes, records, maps, and categories that are legible … . It is possible to argue that the metrics used in this mapping and categorizing of nature, further create incentives for the behaviors of state agents. The resulting patterns layered into the natural world come to closely resemble the categories, measures, and organization of the state agents assigned to assess it. In this way, landscapes are ‘reverse engineered’ to fit the simplified categories used in their description.” 3.1  The work of metrology

The creation and establishment of metrological systems occur through complex processes that involve interactions between political interests, scientific claims, and the material world. The diversity of phenomena and contexts that affect the development of these systems has rendered existing research relatively circumspect about how metrologies are made. As is the (3)

 Callon claims here that “money comes in last” and “is the final piece” in metrological systems. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that money, or price, is not necessarily the final act (temporally) in emissions markets. For example, trades in California’s allowance system occurred two years before the formal launch of the system and prior to the determination of the cap and allocation of emissions units. (4)  While Scott’s focus in this work in on the state, he has elsewhere stated that, “large-scale capitalism is just as much an agency of homogenization, uniformity, grids, and heroic simplification as the state, with the difference that, for capitalists, simplification must pay. The profit motive compels a level of simplification and tunnel vision that, if anything, is more heroic than the early scientific forest of Germany. In this respect, the conclusions I draw from the failures of modern social engineering are as applicable to market-driven standardization as they are to bureaucratic homogeneity” (2010).

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

7

case with understanding markets and economies more generally, building an explanation of how a particular metrological system develops demands a grounded empirical account. The work of metrology is fundamental to defining the ‘thing’ to be exchanged in a market through the assignment and verification of particular characteristics. When we consider the processes of defining things for a market we can identify a range of practices that are brought to bear on transforming things into finished economic objects. Carruthers and Stinchcombe (1999) refer to ‘minting work’ as necessary for establishing the fluidity necessary for a market to function. Defining the characteristics and properties of physical goods might appear to be relatively intuitive in contrast to defining metrics for ‘intangible’ things such as services or property rights, but the contrast is a difference of degree rather than a wholly separate enterprise. The specific definitions and properties of both tangible and intangible things may be subject to persistent dispute; the work of measurement and commensuration is only as robust as the metrological regime upon which it is based. This is not, however, to say that all metrological systems require the same effort to achieve stabilization; the interplay between material properties, technologies, scientific practices, and political alignments will exhibit substantial variation. In some cases the maintenance of metrologies may require substantial upkeep, while in other cases matters may remain settled. Rather than seeking a specific formula from which stable systems of measurement and commensuration might be synthesized, analyzing the fragility or resilience of metrics and metrological regimes requires case-by-case examination. It is not merely objects that can be stabilized. Metrologies themselves can become—in actor-network theory’s term—‘immutable mobiles’, capable of operating in different places and times, semidetached from their origins. The ability of metrological systems and metrics to travel and withstand challenges to their authority, however, is always contingent on the social and material conditions within which they are embedded. Schaffer (1999, page 475) describes how a stable metrological system can “enable results to be expressed in units which are altogether independent of the instruments, the surroundings and the locality of the investigator” and that: ““immense labor had been performed to achieve the vanishing trick through which the local practices needed to make standards had simply disappeared … . Then they stated that the absolute system depended on no particular instrument, or technique, or institution. This helps account for metrology’s power. Metrology involves work which sets up values and then makes their origin invisible.” Or, as Star (1991) put it, “the prior and ongoing work disappears into the doneness.” This is not to say that the issue of how metrological systems get made should inevitably be the sole interest of research; it is equally important to examine the limits of metrological prac­tices to achieve stability and the processes through which metrics and metro­logical regimes might fail. Perhaps most importantly, though, the extension and growth of metrological systems produces diverse and substantial effects not only on the objects they define, but through their ability to reorder the world in their wake. That systems of science and technology are both produced by and produce change in the social and natural world is well established. As Bowker and Star remarked of classification procedures, “it is not a question of mapping a pre-existing territory but of making the map and the territory converge” (2005, page 254). In this sense, metrics may work as a standardized bundle of established practices, technologies, theories, and interests which work to define and commensurate (Fujimura, 1988; 1992). While making generalizations about how metrologies function is difficult, the structure of metrological systems is likely to reflect the knowledge and interests of dominant agents within the field. How contests between different knowledge claims and interests are resolved

8

M H Cooper

will likewise have distributional implications which reinforce existing power differences among competing interests. In the following section I provide three examples of how commodification, commen­ suration, and measurement have affected the design and function of emissions markets in order to illustrate the political and environmental effects of particular metrologies on market rule. 4 Metrology and emissions trading The use of markets as regulatory instruments for greenhouse gas emissions requires the establishment of interlinked metrological systems which are capable of translating between activities that give rise to greenhouse gas emissions and a market-derived price signal tied to these emissions or their mitigation. It is worth noting that, far from there being a single ‘emissions market’ through which credits for producing or mitigating greenhouse gas are passed, there are different types of emissions markets (eg, compliance markets and voluntary markets) and a variety of emissions units (AAUs, CERs, ERUs, RMUs, EUAs, NZUs, etc). While there are similarities across different emissions markets and some emissions units may be fungible with others, each represents the stabilization, at least temporarily, of a metrological system. While all markets are products of preexisting social conditions, markets for environmental policy are explicitly made by bureaucrats, economists, scientists, and politicians. While this section examines the regulation and environmental effects of greenhouse gases, the issues present in emissions markets can offer insights on markets and the politics of environmental regulation more generally. This section begins by offering a stylized account of how emissions trading works in principle, followed by an examination of three assumptions important within the design of emissions trading markets and a discussion of the role of metrology in the resolution of these issues. The logic of emissions trading is based on the view that a market failure exists in which the costs of greenhouse gas emissions and their effects are not borne by the party responsible for their production. As Goodman and Boyd (2011, page 104) put it, ““seen in this light, the appropriate response is ‘not to abandon markets but to act directly to fix [them], through taxes, other forms of price correction, or regulation’ (quoting Stern, 2009). Under this rationale, we have seen the emergence of the Kyoto Protocol’s flexible mechanisms. These market tools allow developed countries to attempt to comply with their CO2 emissions targets in a so-argued ‘cost-effective’ way.” The cost-effectiveness that an emissions market is able to deliver is often described with reference to the ‘two firms’ example. In this stylized example, the regulator decrees that emissions must be reduced by one half. The two firms produce emissions in different volumes and have differing internal costs for reducing emissions: firm A produces 6 tonnes/year and has an abatement cost of $1000/tonne; firm B produces 12 tonnes/year and has an abatement cost of $500/tonne. Two regulatory options are present: a directed regulation that would require each firm to reduce its emissions by one half or emissions trading that would allow the firms to buy and sell rights to emit the halved volume of emissions between themselves. If both firms are directed to halve their emissions, the total volume of emissions falls to 9 tonnes/year and the total cost of abatement is $6000 ($3000 each). However, if the firms are allowed to trade emissions permits, firm A could maintain its emissions at 6 tonnes/ year, and buy emissions permits from firm B. Firm B can therefore reduce its production to 3 tonnes/year (at a cost of $4500) and obtain a price of between $1500 and $3000 from the sale of emissions permits from firm A. The outcome for both firms under emissions is less costly than under directed regulation, and the regulator is satisfied because the desired level of emissions reduction has been achieved.

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

9

This simplified case and the experience of emission trading in practice reveals a number of assumptions necessary to develop an emissions market, including: (1) that the activities that produce emissions are equivalent in kind; (2) that a unified measure of emissions is available; and, (3) that the volume of emissions generated by each firm is known.(5) However, none of these assumptions holds true in the absence of a coordinated metrological system. The way in which the construction of interlinking metrological systems has been attempted can therefore be used to examine some of the ways in which measurement, commensuration, and commodification are central to the development of emissions trading markets and to reveal some of the political implications of metrology in market rule. Assumption 1: the activities that produce emissions are equivalent in kind. The simultaneous emission of two tonnes of carbon dioxide—one arising from the use of a wood stove in Burkina Faso to boil water and cook, and the other arising from combustion of jet fuel on a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland—have, all else equal, identical effects on the warming of the atmosphere. One could argue that, if the purpose of an emissions market is to internalize the cost of emissions into the activity which produced such emissions, each party—the users of the wood stove and the passengers on the jet—should face the same economic liability for their emissions. This metric, in which all emissions are treated equally, regardless of their source and regardless of the ability of agents to avoid creating those emissions, would be appropriately described as an unjust elision of ‘survival’ and ‘luxury’ emissions (Agarwal and Narain, 1991). However, when the degree of difference between the two activities is reduced to, for example, choosing to drive a car in a city with an efficient public transportation system versus driving in a city with an inefficient public transportation system, it becomes much harder to imagine how to create a metrological system capable of recognizing such fine detail.(6) Instead of creating a fundamental equivalence between emissions, a system that creates fundamental equivalence between persons has been suggested (Fawcett and Parag, 2010). Within such a system the earth’s physical capacity to act as a sink for emissions is divided equally among 7.1 billion people. Beyond any practical considerations, such a system would penalize actors unable to extract themselves from socioenvironmental systems with large emissions footprints.(7) The creation of equivalence between sources of emissions is of significant practical concern as well. Within the existing international regulatory framework for emissions, power plants are subject to regulation while international transportation and (5)

 A number of other assumptions exist within this example that are beyond the scope of this paper. These include: that historical emissions are equivalent to future emissions (see Friman and Strandberg, 2014; Liverman, 2009), that the fungibility between different emissions units remains stable, that the appropriate level of emissions reductions is known, that the cost of reducing their emissions is known by firms or other actors, that there is variation in the cost of emissions abatement between firms, that the ability of firms to respond to mandated emissions reductions or to the price signal are otherwise uninhibited, that the transaction costs associated with the market are lower than the cost savings arising from the trading market, that reductions encourage equal levels of technological innovation (see Lohmann, 2010), and that firms will comply with rather than politically contest the directive to reduce emissions. (6)  A similar issue exists among the varieties of emissions units in circulation, the process through which these units were earned or assigned, and the degree to which these units correspond to real reductions in emissions (Hepburn, 2007). (7)  This is, to some degree, the intention of those who have advocated a global system of personal emissions allowances. The economic liabilities incurred by persons (primarily in developed countries) where per capita emissions are highest would be transferred to the developing world for the explicit purpose of increasing the rate and capacity of (presumably low-emissions) development.

10

M H Cooper

shipping are not. Such omissions arise not from normative concerns, but because power plants are stationary and subject to regulation by a single nation-state while other sources of emissions are not so easily measured and governed. The final component of this assumption is the separation of production and consumption as sources of direct and indirect emissions. Within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), emissions are the responsibility of the country in which they are emitted. While in principle this makes the measurement, reporting, and verification of emissions more straightforward, this metrological system breaks the connection between consumption and both the moral and financial responsibility for emissions. The alignment of consumption or production with the responsibility for resulting emissions is an issue of measurement and commensuration insofar as any particular alignment between the site of emissions and the cause of emissions negates the possibility of an alternate alignment. Emissions caused by the manufacture of goods in China, for example, are assigned as the responsibility of China, rather than the various countries to which these are exported. Because China (and other developing countries) have not, at present, agreed to obligations to reduce total emissions, the international regulatory regime lacks the capacity to effect consumption-driven emissions reductions.(8) One exception to the misalignment of incentives and responsibility is when fossil fuels (especially petroleum) are imported by developed countries from the developing world. However, the reverse of this—the growth of emissions in developing countries from fossil fuels (especially coal) imported from the developed world—is all too common. Assumption 2: a unified measure of emissions is available. Metrological systems are produced to create equivalence between different objects or forms of matter. Within the climate change issue, ‘carbon’ is often used as synecdoche for greenhouse gas emissions more generally, but its use elides important differences in the biophysical characteristics of the various greenhouse gases and their production. Likewise, the Kyoto Protocol’s adoption of a ‘single-basket approach’ which creates equivalences between carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is now fundamental to trading different gases within a market (Daniel et al, 2012).(9) This commensuration is expressed in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or tCO2e. Paterson and Stripple (2012, page 571) offer insight into the history of tCO2e: ““In the late 1980s, scientists felt the need to come up with a single measure by which all greenhouse gases (GHG) could be compared to each other. They needed this in order to be able to build scenarios for future projections of climate change based on different trajectories of GHG emissions. Governments wanted these comparisons in order to be able to decide how they could respond most effectively. As they anticipated negotiations towards a treaty, they also wanted to be able to maximise their freedom of manoeuvre by including as many GHGs as possible rather than just CO2.” Global warming potentials are intended to provide a relative measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a given time period and quantify how much climate forcing a given year’s emissions will produce. If over a 100-year period methane traps twenty-eight times as much heat as a similar mass of carbon dioxide, it has a GWP

(8)

 This point applies in equal measure to Kyoto Protocol Annex 1 countries such as the United States and Canada that have refused to ratify the treaty or have renounced their obligations under the Protocol. (9)  Targets for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol cover emissions of the six main greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

11

of 28.(10) The existence of GWPs make it possible to compare, for example, the methane emissions produced by one average New Zealand dairy cow in one year (83.91 kg) against the carbon dioxide produced by gasoline combustion: 83.91 kg of CH4 is equivalent to 2.35 tCO2e, or burning of 264 gallons of gasoline. The value of GWP is dependent on the timespan over which the warming potential is calculated, and the selection of timespan is ultimately arbitrary. For example, the GWP of methane over 20 years is 84 (7.0 tCO2e or 793 gallons of gasoline); however, because methane has a shorter atmospheric lifetime than carbon dioxide, its GWP over 500 years is only 7.9 (0.7 tCO2e = 75 gallons of gasoline). Selecting a 500-year metric over a 20-year metric could therefore reduce the cost of permits for methane emissions by a factor of 10. There is growing recognition, however, that alternative metrics—that is, alternative means to achieve commensuration between different greenhouse gases—may be more appropriate than GWP (Frame, 2011; Johansson, 2012; Manning and Reisinger, 2011; Reisinger et al, 2010; Shine, 2009). One alternative, global temperature potential (GTP), is derived from modeling the actual consequences of emissions on global temperature (in contrast to GWP which concerns radiative forcing.) While the GWP of methane over 100 years is 28, the GTP of methane is only 4 (Myhre et al, 2013). Where the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme avoided the inclusion of non-CO2 gases and focused on stationary installations such as power plants and factories, other emissions markets such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme incorporate multiple gases within single emissions units (CER and NZU, respectively). (11) Within a market in which different gases are converted into a common measure, the cost of methane emissions is 7 times more if GWP is used than if GTP is used. It is therefore quite easy to imagine how the establishment of a particular metric for comparing gases or later attempts to shift between metrics would have significant financial effects and could give rise to serious political contestation. Assumption 3: the volume of emissions generated by each market actor is known. The UNFCCC requires all parties to the convention to maintain national inventories of their sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and to report the results of the inventory on a regular basis. Yet, as Goodman and Boyd (2011, page 105) point out, ““the science of carbon emissions quantification is not only contentious but is embedded in a multiplicity of political economic and cultural contexts. And this occurs all the way from the measurement and accounting of ‘smokestack’ emissions in somewhere like the UK or Germany down to the grasslands or forest re-growth that is (theoretically) soaking up all of these emissions as part of a ‘clean’ development project in Africa and/or China.” Where MacKenzie (2009) found stability in the measurement of emissions arising from stationary energy production at a British university, other emissions processes assert significant uncertainties. Monitoring emissions in economies which lack transparency and counting emissions from ‘biological’ sources such as forests, agriculture, and land-use change remains far less straightforward. For example, Lövbrand and Stripple (10)

 The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report in 1995 calculated the global warming potential (100 year) for methane to be 21. The Third Assessment Report in 2001 and Fourth Assessment Report updated the figure to 23 and 25, respectively. The Fifth Assessment Report again updated methane’s GWP(100) to 28, and included an estimate of methane’s GWP including climate-carbon feedbacks at 34 (Myhre et al, 2013). The Kyoto Protocol employed an unrevised GWP(100) of 21 based on the Second Assessment Report. (11)  MacKenzie (2009) discusses how the mitigation of HFC-23, a trace industrial greenhouse gas which has a GWP of 11 700, accounted for US $3.5 billion in CDM credits earned predominantly by Chinese refrigerant plants.

12

M H Cooper

(2011, pages 192–193) noted in regard to the development of regulations for land use, land-use change, and forestry: ““When the negotiating parties reconvened … a number of questions of a technical kind were raised. Which land use categories should be included in a net accounting system? How should a forest be defined? From which base year should land based carbon removals be calculated? How should states best factor out carbon uptake resulting from natural processes rather than direct human-induced land use activities?” When significant degrees of uncertainty persist within national inventories it is unsurprising that the capacity for assigning emissions liability specific to each firm (or forest owner or farmer) remains elusive. For example, the volume of methane emitted by ruminant livestock is affected by the volume of feed intake, an animal’s diet, breed, age, behavior, and individual variation. Assuming the total livestock population of a country is known (which itself can be highly uncertain) it is possible to assign an averaged emissions factor for each livestock class throughout the country. To do so, however, is to miss a necessary component of emissions markets: there must be some variation in the volume of emissions per unit of production and the cost of abatement between market participants; otherwise there is no efficiency to be gained through the market mechanism. Indeed, this is precisely what New Zealand found in its attempt to include agricultural sources within its emissions trading scheme. When the agricultural sector faced an economic liability for their emissions without the potential to differentiate emissions-efficient production from inefficient production it perceived itself as facing a tax rather than an emissions market and undertook (successful) political mobilization against the emissions trading scheme (Cooper et al, 2013). Such questions go straight to the heart of the construction of metrological systems. While some emitting activities are robustly monitored and have precise emissions flows derived from well-documented chemical reactions, other activities, particularly those that involve biological sources such as forestry, enteric fermentation in livestock, emissions of nitrous oxide from agricultural croplands and pastures, and carbon sequestration in soils, are much more uncertain.(12) The derivation of each inventory component within the common reporting format requires the mobilization of vast resources for data collection and modeling of each emissions source. Given the inherent degree of variability of biological sources and sinks of emissions, extending the metrological system to cover the entirety of the global atmosphere is potentially a boundless task. 5 Discussion—doing critical metrology The preceding examples are but a few of the many ways in which metrology exerts significant influences on the design of emissions markets and its effects. Following Mitchell’s (2008) characterization of the economy as a metrological project, emissions markets—and markets more generally—should also be seen as “a project, or a series of competing projects, of rival attempts to establish metrological regimes, based upon new technologies of organization, measurement, calculation, and representation” (page 1120). Doing critical metrology can direct attention to how measurement is done, why commensuration occurs, the dynamics of metrological systems, and the ways in which this affects markets as intentional projects. According to Callon (1998b), metrology is a means to ‘cool’ situations that are ‘hot’ with political contestation. He states that “Society as a whole must agree to take action in order to produce an officially recognized body of knowledge and measurements—in the metrological sense”; otherwise “measurements—in the political sense—cannot be taken with (12)

 Even in developed countries which employ sophisticated measurement and modeling systems bestpractice inventory methods for emissions from livestock agriculture retain an error range of ±20% for key sources such as enteric fermentation and nitrous oxide emissions from soil (IPCC, 2006).

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

13

any legitimacy” (page 262). On emissions markets specifically, Callon (2009, page 541) states: ““To the question: ‘what is a market that works correctly?’ they [emissions markets] suggest the following answer: it is a market which welcome and recognize as one of its most central constituent elements all the actors who demand to be taken into account, including those who are considered marginal or on the verge of exclusion, with their points of view, their matters of concern, their proposed tools, framings, and models.” The examples provided in the previous section—and political disputes on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions more generally—belie the suggestion that metrological practices act to cool political disagreement. Rather, the opposite is true: making an emissions market inevitably involves establishing one system of measurement and commensuration at the expense of all other potential systems, and, because market design inevitably has distributional effects, metrology becomes a site of increased political contestation. The market that ‘works correctly’ (in Callon’s terms) is an impossibility. Influence over how commensuration occurs is inherently political and asymmetrical (Espeland and Stevens, 1998); markets inherently privilege some actors, elements, and framings over others. Moreover, the initial production of a metrological system and design of an emissions market is likely to be the period with the most political contestation. Once markets are active, dominant agents in the market are likely to resist shifting from the commensuration that was developed in their interest. Seeing commensuration as inherently political also offers some insight into disputes about who has responsibility for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and how such mitigation should be achieved. As noted in section 4, molecules of the same gas are not necessarily equivalent—nor are the burdens or responsibilities for mitigating emissions. The principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ in the UNFCCC is an example of one such metric: during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, Annex 1 countries (developed countries that ratified the Protocol) had binding emissions targets, while developing countries did not.(13) The principle reflected that developed countries had more capacity to mitigate their emissions and were responsible for the majority of emissions that had been generated to date. The impasse that characterizes current climate negotiations continues to be a dispute about the appropriate metrics for mitigation: how to compare ‘survival’ versus ‘luxury’ emissions, how—or whether—to establish commensuration between different greenhouse gases; how to commensurate mitigation from sources with different technological mitigation potentials (eg, energy versus agriculture); how to commensurate past emissions and future emissions; whether to measure mitigation based on absolute emissions reduction or on improvement in emissions intensity (eg, molecules of CO2 versus molecules of CO2 per dollar of GDP), and so on. Metrology refers to more than a set of rules for measurement and commensuration, though; it provides a framework for examining how these systems grow, function, withstand challenges or uncertainty, and reformat the world around them. Espeland and Stevens (2008, page 421) claim that “the authority of numbers, like that of scientific facts more generally, depends on establishing networks among objects and humans that become so sturdy they are no longer disputed or subject to disassembly.” As in Latour’s (1983) study of Pasteur, employing the concept critically can direct our attention to the networks that produce and extend a particular regime, how proponents and supporters are enrolled in its propagation, and how opponents and challengers attempt to rework or undermine it.

(13)

 Article 3.3 of the UNFCCC states that, “The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.” This principle applies to developed and developing countries alike.

14

M H Cooper

6 Conclusions This paper has argued that metrology, as the practice of measurement and commensuration, is a fundamental aspect of market rule. Critical metrology, as an approach, can be used to examine the techniques and politics of metrology, and its effects. Attention to measurement, commensuration, and commodification is of notable importance for markets in greenhouse gas emissions because, as MacKenzie (2009, page 453) noted, “the esoteric nature of subpolitics [in emissions markets] means that researchers have a particularly salient role to play in bringing to light matters of apparent detail that in fact play critical roles in this respect.” Seeing measurement and commensuration as inevitably political can also provide insight into ongoing disagreements about the appropriate metrics and responsibilities for mitigating climate change and the form and function of markets more generally. While this paper has focused on how metrological practices structure market rule, it is not necessarily the case that attention to measurement and commensuration will always make a significant contribution to the demystification of markets and commodities. Climate scientists did not create carbon dioxide equivalents to assist in the financialization of the global atmosphere, and yet, “the global carbon economy now works largely within and for itself, losing a direct connection to the environmental values that initially concerned us about carbon in the first place” (Moolna, 2012, page 2). It is likely that no amount of nuance or clarity in the analysis of commodities would entirely curtail the injuries enabled by the opacity of market transactions. I therefore suggest that we consider Wallerstein’s (2009) call to find “a thousand ways” to “encourage the decommodification of as much as we candecommodify”. Similarly, a point of caution about directing attention to metrology as a feature of market rule is warranted. Market rule exhibits significant heterogeneity and there are many markets to study and many ways that we might study markets. While recognition of such diversity is a strength of geography’s methodological preferences, it is important to mark our objects of study and our accounts of these objects against the significance of their real-world material effects. The metrological properties of markets are far from constituting the whole of markets; therefore, attention to metrology will be more revealing in some cases than in others and, as always, we should be duly reflexive rather than allow theory alone to fix our gaze. There is little reason to think that emissions trading markets have yielded either effective or equitable outcomes to date. There is good reason for skepticism about their potential to do so in the near future as well. It is not, however, beyond imagining that market-based policies might be made to deliver significant greenhouse gas reductions and economically and socially just outcomes given the right political support and institutional design. Markets may be highly ‘efficient’ at arriving at desired outcomes when they are well structured, but they are just as efficient at arriving at undesirable outcomes. There is also reason to be skeptical of assuming that the ‘right’ politics and the right institutional market structure are enough to generate the desired outcomes, or that there can necessarily be a consensus about what these desirable outcomes might be. The market mechanism itself, and the way in which real relationships become obscured when passed through the commodification, social detachment, and spatial distance of markets, makes arriving at good outcomes exceedingly difficult to engineer. Complexity is the enemy of transparency, and markets are never transparent and always complex. Acknowledgements. This paper was presented in the sessions on Making Market Rule(s) at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. I thank Joshua Akers and Chris Muellerleile for organizing these sessions. The paper was also presented at the Upper Midwest Nature–Society Workshop in Champaign-Urbana, October 12–13, 2013. Many thanks are owed to the participants and discussants at this workshop for the many useful comments and contributions they provided for the refinement of this paper. Thanks are also owed to Matt Turner, Morgan Robertson,

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

15

Leila Harris, and Chris Muellerleile for their helpful comments. This research was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant Award #0848444. References Agarwal A, Narain S, 1991 Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism (Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi) Alder K, 1995, “A revolution to measure: the political economy of the metric system in France”, in The Values of Precision Ed. M N Wise (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) pp 39–71 Alder K, 1998, “Making things the same: representation, tolerance and the end of the ancien regime in France” Social Studies of Science 28 499–545 Asdal K, 2011, “The office: the weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority” Accounting, Organizations and Society 36 1–9 Bailey I, Compston H, 2010, “Geography and the politics of climate policy” Geography Compass 4 1097–1114 Bakker K, 2005, “Neoliberalizing nature? Market environmentalism in water supply in England and Wales” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 542‒565 Barry A, 2002, “The anti-political economy” Economy and Society 31 268–284 Barry A, Slater D, 2002, “Introduction. The technological economy” Economy and Society 31 175–193 Berndt C, Boeckler M, 2009, “Geographies of circulation and exchange: constructions of markets” Progress in Human Geography 33 535–551 Berndt C, Boeckler M, 2001, “Geographies of markets: materials, morals and monsters in motion” Progress in Human Geography 35 559–567 Bowker G, Star S L, 2000 Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) Bumpus A G, 2011, “The matter of carbon: understanding the materiality of tCO2e in carbon offsets” Antipode 43 612–638 Bumpus A G, Liverman D M, 2008, “Accumulation by decarbonization and the governance of carbon offsets” Economic Geography 84 127–155 Busch L, 2011 Standards: Recipes for Reality (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA) Callon M, 1998a, “Introduction. The embeddedness of economic markets in economics”, in The Laws of the Markets Ed. M Callon (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 1–57 Callon M, 1998b, “An essay on framing and overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology”, in The Laws of the Markets Ed. M Callon (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 244–269 Callon M, 2009, “Civilizing markets: carbon trading between in vitro and in vivo experiments” Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 535–548 Carruthers B G, Stinchcombe A L, 1999, “The social structure of liquidity: flexibility, markets, and states” Theory and Society 28 353–382 Castree N, 2003, “Commodifying what nature?” Progress in Human Geography 27 273–297 Castree N, 2008, “Neoliberalising nature: processes, effects, and evaluations” Environment and Planning A 40 153–173 Cooper M H, Boston J, Bright J, 2013, “Policy challenges for livestock emissions abatement: lessons from New Zealand” Climate Policy 13 110–133 Daniel J S, Solomon S, Sanford T J, McFarland M, Fuglestvedt J S, Friedlingstein P, 2012, “Limitations of single-basket trading: lessons from the Montreal Protocol for climate policy” Climatic Change 111 241–248 Desrosières A, 1998 The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA) Espeland W N, Stevens M L, 1998, “Commensuration as a social process” Annual Review of Sociology 24 313–343 Espeland W N, Stevens M L, 2008, “A sociology of quantification” European Journal of Sociology 48 401–436 Fawcett T, Parag Y, 2010, “An introduction to personal carbon trading” Climate Policy 10 329–338 Frame D J, 2011, “The problems of markets: science, norms and the commodification of carbon” The Geographical Journal 177 138–148

16

M H Cooper

Freidberg S, 2013, “Calculating sustainability in supply chain capitalism” Economy and Society 42 571–596 Freidberg, S, 2014, “Footprint technopolitics” Geoforum 55 178‒189 Friman M, Strandberg G, 2014, “Historical responsibility for climate change: science and the science–policy interface” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews—Climate Change 5 297–316 Fujimura J, 1988, “The molecular biological bandwagon in cancer research: where social worlds meet” Social Problems 35 261–283 Fujimura J, 1992, “Crafting science: standardized packages, boundary objects, and ‘translation’ ”, in Science as Practice and Culture Ed. A Pickering (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL) pp 168–211 Goodman M K, Boyd E, 2011, “A social life for carbon? Commodification, markets and care” The Geographical Journal 177 102–109 Gregson N, Watkins H, Calestani M, 2013, “Political markets: recycling, economization and marketization” Economy and Society 42 1–25 Gutiérrez M, 2011, “Making markets out of thin air: a case of capital involution” Antipode 43 639–661 Hepburn C, 2007, “Carbon trading: a review of the Kyoto mechanisms” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32 375–393 Higgins V, Larner W, 2010, “Standards and standardization as a social scientific problem”, in Calculating the Social: Standards and the Reconfiguration of Governing Eds V Higgins, W Larner (Palgrave Macmillan, New York) pp 1–17 IPCC, 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Volume 4: Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama) Johansson D J A, 2012, “Economics- and physical-based metrics for comparing greenhouse gases” Climatic Change 110 123–141 Keller E J, Milà i Canals L, King H, Lee J, Clift R, 2013, “Agri-food certification schemes: how do they address greenhouse gas emissions?” Greenhouse Gas Measurement and Management 3 85–106 Lansing D M, 2011, “Realizing carbon’s value: discourse and calculation in the production of carbon forestry offsets in Costa Rica” Antipode 43 731–753 Lansing D M, 2012, “Performing carbon’s materiality: the production of carbon offsets and the framing of exchange” Environment and Planning A 44 204–220 Latour B, 1983, “Give me a laboratory and I will raise the world”, in Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science Eds K D Knorr-Cetina, M Mulkay (Sage, London) pp 141–170 Latour B, 1987 Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA) Lee R, Leyshon A, Smith A, 2008, “Rethinking economies/economic geographies” Geoforum 39 1111–1115 Liverman D M, 2009, “Conventions of climate change: constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere” Journal of Historical Geography 35 279–296 Loconto A, Busch L, 2010. “Standards, techno-economic networks, and playing fields: performing the global market economy” Review of International Political Economy 17 507–536 Lohmann L, 2005, “Marketing and making carbon dumps: commodification, calculation and counterfactuals in climate change mitigation” Science as Culture 14 203–235 Lohmann L, 2010, “Uncertainty markets and carbon markets: variation on Polanyian themes” New Political Economy 15 225–254 Lohmann L, 2011, “The endless algebra of climate markets” Capitalism Nature Socialism 22 93–116 Lövbrand E, Stripple J, 2011, “Making climate change governable: accounting for carbon as sinks, credits and personal budgets” Critical Policy Studies 5 187–200 Lovell H, 2014, “Measuring forest carbon”, in Governing the Climate: New Approaches to Rationality, Power and Politics Eds J Stripple, H Bulkeley (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 175–196 MacKenzie D, 2009, “Making things the same: gases, emission rights and the politics of carbon markets” Accounting, Organizations and Society 34 440–455 Mallard A, 1998, “Compare, standardize and settle agreement: on some usual metrological problems” Social Studies of Science 28 571–601

Commensuration, commodification, and metrology in emissions markets and beyond

17

Manning M, Reisinger A, 2011, “Broader perspectives for comparing different greenhouse gases” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 1891–1905 Marx K, 1867 [1976] Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (Penguin Books, London) Miller C A, 2005, “New civic epistemologies of quantification: making sense of indicators of local and global sustainability” Science, Technology, and Human Values 30 403–432 Mitchell T, 2008, “Rethinking economy” Geoforum 39 1116–1121 Moolna A, 2012, “Making sense of CO2: putting carbon in context” Global Environmental Politics 12 1–7 Myhre G et al, 2013, “Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing”, in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Eds T F Stocker et al (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 659–740 Newell P, Paterson M, 2010 Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) O’Connell J, 1993, “Metrology: the creation of universality by the circulation of particulars” Social Studies of Science 23 129–173 Paterson M, Stripple J, 2012, “Virtuous carbon” Environmental Politics 21 563–582 Peck J, 2012, “Economic geography: island life” Dialogues in Human Geography 2 113–133 Porter T M, 1994, “Making things quantitative” Science in Context 3 389–407 Porter T M, 1995 Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) Power M, 2004, “Counting, control and calculation: reflections on measuring and management” Human Relations 57 765–783 Prudham W S, 2005 Knock on Wood: Nature as Commodity in Douglas-Fir Country (Routledge, New York) Prudham S, 2007, “The fictions of autonomous intervention: accumulation by dispossession, commodification and life patents in Canada” Antipode 39 406–429 Prudham S, 2009, “Commodification”, in A Companion to Environmental Geography Eds N Castree, D Demeritt, D Liverman, B Rhoads (Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford) pp 123‒142 Reisinger A, Meinshausen M, Manning M, Bodeker G, 2010, “Uncertainties of global metrics: CO2 and CH4” Geophysical Research Letters 37:L14707 Robbins P, 2008, “The state in political ecology: a postcard to political geography from the field”, in The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography Eds K Cox, M Low, J Robinson (Sage, London) pp 205–218 Robertson M M, 2000, “No net loss: wetland restoration and the incomplete capitalization of nature” Antipode 32 463–493 Robertson M M, 2004, “The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance” Geoforum 35 361–373 Robertson M M, 2006, “The nature that capital can see: science, state, and market in the commodification of ecosystem services” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24 367–387 Robertson M, 2007, “Discovering price in all the wrong places: the work of commodity definition and price under neoliberal environmental policy” Antipode 39 500–526 Robertson M, 2012, “Measurement and alienation: making a world of ecosystem services” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 37 386–401 Schaffer S, 1995, “Accurate measurement is an English science”, in The Values of Precision Ed. M N Wise (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) pp 135–172 Schaffer S, 1999, “Late Victorian metrology and its instrumentation: a manufactury of ohms”, in The Science Studies Reader Ed. M Biagioli (Routledge, New York) pp 458–479 Scott J, 1998 Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT) Scott J, 2010, “James Scott on agriculture as politics, the dangers of standardization and not being governed” Theory Talks number 38, 15 May, http://www.theory-talks.org/2010/05/ theory-talk-38.html

18

M H Cooper

Shapin S, 1995, “Here and everywhere: sociology of scientific knowledge” Annual Review of Sociology 21 289–321 Shine K P, 2009, “The global warming potential—the need for an interdisciplinary retrial” Climatic Change 96 467–472 Star S L, 1991, “The sociology of an invisible: the primacy of work in the writings of Anselm Strauss”, in Social Organization and Social Processes: Essays in Honour of Anselm L. Strauss Ed. D Maines (Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne, NY) pp 265–283 Star S L, Lampland M, 2009, “Reckoning with standards”, in Standards and their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life Eds M Lampland, S L Star (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY) pp 3–24 Stern N, 2009 A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How to Manage Climate Change in a New Era of Progress and Prosperity (The Bodley Head, London) Timmermans S, Epstein S, 2010, “A world of standards but not a standard world: toward a sociology of standards and standardization” Annual Review of Sociology 36 69–89 Wallerstein I, 2009, “Follow Brazil’s example” The Nation 23 March Wise M N, 1995, “Introduction”, in The Values of Precision Ed. M N Wise (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) pp 3–13