Accounting issues: Accounting for the impact of culturally transformative actions that may not be climate neutral?

Cultural impact cannot be measured with the Zero Fund’s accounting methods. 

This feels strange because so much contemporary artist and curatorial discourse is centered around questions of meaning and change. What does the artwork mean for the artist? What does it communicate to an audience? What  research and references went into the work in order to make it meaningful? Contemporary art’s free play with ideas is a license taken to communicate in ways intended to impact society. Much of art's supposed value is in what new ideas it contributes to society, often towards cultural renewal.

Over the last few decades, the genre of social practice art has put an even greater focus on an artist or curator’s impact. Social practice is still concerned with meaning, but its methods differ from generic modern art by directly playing with social exchange and performative affect, often beyond the gallery. While generic contemporary art might suggest that a painting is meaningful within itself, social practice organizes the composition and reception of the artwork’s aesthetic play as an element of the work. It communicates or translates concepts or experience to build meaningful relationships. The results may be more directly transformative. Social practice artwork also often draws from and contributes to protest aesthetics and protest movements.

As contemporary art or social practice, art can transform things which create speculative value. Art is valued because its meaning can be transformational. Artist and curator’s careers are made of of the political and social effect they creatively organize.

So it's jarring to realize that climate neutral production has nothing to do with any of this.

Carbon neutral production may excite an object-oriented ontologist, because at its core is a simple materialist question, “how much carbon was either released or captured in this expense?” Carbon neutral production does not register immaterial attitudes. It is focused on the greenhouse gases from financial transactions and production.  If produced in a carbon neutral way, an artwork communicating a desire to burn the world’s oil and to bury all the forests in tar would be more “green” than a community discussion around how to establish a neighborhood carbon sink and organic farm if attendees came by car. 

When accounting for greenhouse gas, throw away any attention to meaning, political or cultural development. It's not the topic here.