Mother Jones recently published a story that explores what happens when companies are able to buy their way out of Carbon emissions limits.

Journalist Mark Schapiro explains how GM, Chevron, and American Electric Power gave the US-based Nature Conservancy $18 million to buy 50,000 acres of Brazilian Atlantic forest. The project was, he says, “a test case for preserving forests via corporate carbon credits.”

The companies were hedging their bets lest the 1997 Kyoto climate accord or other legislation went into full force. Not only could the forests be used to offset the companies’ emissions if legislation were passed in the U.S., but the forests could be turned into offsets to sell anywhere else in the world as other countries established emissions limits.

Like indulgences paid to the Catholic Church by sinners in the Middle Ages, industries are trying to find new ways to buy their way out of emissions limits. Instead of reducing their emissions, forest preservation is being accepted as a fair trade.

This method of managing carbon waste is unsustainable in the long run: companies that can afford to keep emissions high will do so. The method is also socially unjust. When the companies purchased part of the Brazilian Atlantic forest, they were purchasing the homes and, in some cases, livelihoods of natives and farmers who have lived there, sustainably, for generations. No longer able to hunt or scavenge for the lucrative hearts of palms, the locals are left stranded in the middle of a corporate wildlife preserve.

Managing any kind of waste requires a constant re-evaluation of the systems that produce the waste in the first place. In the case of Carbon emissions, it will also require more stories like this Mother Jones piece. We need to understand the layers of impact of our waste management practices. Otherwise we will create “solutions” that have consequences just as destructive if not more destructive than the original problems.

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