Indulgence craved

Early carbon offset trading

In pre-Reformation Europe one could, one was encouraged (pre-cursor of sub-prime mortgages) to buy, in effect, virtue. The Church had appointed itself the arbiter of virtue, and thereby the effective owner of virtue. For a payment, the laity could acquire an indulgence, an official forgiveness of past sins that might otherwise exclude one from heaven.

Well, actually, that is a gross over-simplification. It was all much more complicated:

To facilitate explanation, it may be well to state what an indulgence is not. It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin; neither could be granted by any power. It is not the forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it supposes that the sin has already been forgiven. It is not an exemption from any law or duty, and much less from the obligation consequent on certain kinds of sin, e.g., restitution; on the contrary, it means a more complete payment of the debt which the sinner owes to God. It does not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of subsequent lapses into sin. Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer’s salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory. The absurdity of such notions must be obvious to any one who forms a correct idea of what the Catholic Church really teaches on this subject.

Yet some, at the time, thought rather differently, and that the result was to promote vice rather than virtue.

Luther thinking differently

All sorts of trouble followed after that.

In 1567, Pope Pius V cancelled all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions, but indulgences continued to be a matter exercising the minds of the Church:

After the Council of Trent, Clement VIII established a commission of Cardinals to deal with indulgences according to the mind of the Council. It continued its work during the pontificate of Paul V and published various bulls and decrees on the matter. But only Clement IX established a true Congregation of Indulgences (and Relics) with a Brief of 6 July 1669. In a motu proprio on 28 January 1904, Pius X joined the Congregation of Indulgences with that of Rites, but with the restructuring of the Roman Curia in 1908 all matters regarding indulgences was assigned to the Holy Office. In a motu proprio on 25 March 1915, Benedict XV transferred the Holy Office's Section for Indulgences to the Apostolic Penitentiary, but maintained the Holy Office's responsibility for matters regarding the doctrine of indulgences.

By the bull Indulgentiarum doctrina of 1 January 1967, Pope Paul VI, responding to suggestions made at the Second Vatican Council, substantially revised the practical application of the traditional doctrine.

Environmental protection is the new virtue and we are in the process of erecting a new Church and complicated ecclesiatical mechanisms to protect it. But, in our society, someone owns everything, including the environment, and so our mechanisms must, once again, have a monetary aspect.

It was long ago decided that someone owned the land. 'Naturally' someone must own the water the air and everything else around us.

As George Monbiot tells us, our last government, at a cost of £100,000, 'commissioned a research company to produce a total annual price for England's ecosystems. After taking the money, the company reported – with a certain understatement – that this exercise was "theoretically challenging to complete, and considered by some not to be a theoretically sound endeavour". Some of the services provided by England's ecosystems, it pointed out, "may in fact be infinite in value".

'This rare flash of common sense did nothing to discourage the current government from seeking first to put a price on nature, then to create a market in its disposal. The UK now has a natural capital committee, an Ecosystem Markets Task Force and an inspiring new lexicon. We don't call it nature any more: now the proper term is "natural capital". Natural processes have become "ecosystem services", as they exist only to serve us. Hills, forests and river catchments are now "green infrastructure", while biodiversity and habitats are "asset classes" within an "ecosystem market". All of them will be assigned a price, all of them will become exchangeable.

'But it doesn't end there. Once a resource has been commodified, speculators and traders step in. The Ecosystem Markets Task Force now talks of "harnessing City financial expertise to assess the ways that these blended revenue streams and securitisations enhance the ROI [return on investment] of an environmental bond".'