Offset

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A carbon registry sells premium credits from direct actions and industrial sabotage (pipeline blockades, plant shutdowns) as archival-ink certificates; proceeds go to the activists

Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne, Offset, Installation view, 2025

Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne, Offset, Installation view, 2025

Initiator(s)

Tega Brain, Sam Lavigne

Description

Offset is a carbon registry selling high-quality premium carbon credits generated from cases of direct action and industrial sabotage. We analyze and quantify each case of direct action for its carbon benefit, translating this into credits using methods taken directly from the carbon accounting industry such as temporary carbon storage. Credits are represented by unique certificates printed in archival ink on photo rag, and the proceeds from each sale are donated back to the activists responsible for the direct action. If carbon offsetting extends the logic of quantification and finance to all aspects of human life, why haven't these interventions in the carbon cycle been counted before now?
Carbon offsets in their current form apply the logic of capitalism to our atmospheric interactions. This logic assumes that all activities on Earth can be quantified and abstracted by means of a price, and therefore exchanged. Based on this reasoning, carbon offsets operate on the presumption that it is possible to export or outsource the effects of one’s decisions—whether at the scale of the individual, the community, or the nation state—to someone or someplace else, or even to future generations. In this way, existing carbon-offset markets act to maintain the status quo rather than address the root causes of the climate catastrophe.
Offset asks what an alternative offset market focused on social exchanges and political actions that contribute to a program of radical change would look like. The result is presented as an installation that includes the online registry and web store, our innovative new offsetting methodology called “Industrial Sabotage as Temporary Carbon Storage,” a selection of the carbon credit certificates, and a video work titled “Melts into Air.”

Goals

To redirect funds to climate activists, many of whom are facing legal actions for their work;
To critique carbon offsetting approaches in their current form and build an awareness of the linage of market based approaches to environmental problems;
To build a deeper recognition of the carbon benefits of direct action and sabotage.

Beneficial outcomes

To date (2026) the project has redirected several thousands of dollars to climate activists. The project has produced public scrutiny of problematic methods in the offsetting industry such as temporary carbon storage and ton-year accounting. Despite having received heavy critique from climate scientists (see: https://carbonplan.org/research/ton-year-explainer), these methods remain widely used in the industry. More broadly speaking, this project also builds a critique these attempts to commodify the atmosphere. The initiators donated approximately $3000 to the legal and support funds for various climate activists and hope to continue to do this via offset certificate sales.
The work has been exhibited in the exhibition, "How to Get to Zero" at Pioneer Works in New York City and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) in Colorado in 2025/2026. It received a positive New York Times review and the promotional video shared on Instagram has been viewed 529,000 times since its release in October of 2025.

Location

United States of America

Users

Carbon emitters who wish to neutralize their emissions

Maintained by

Tega Brain, Sam Levigne

Duration

2025

Category

Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social

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