· 3 min read
Return to The paradox of carbon credits
Move to 26. The Profits paradox <> Move to 28. The Competition paradox
Have you ever tried to un-scramble an egg?
Ever noticed how your house gets messy on its own, but never seems to clean itself? Or how your beer warms up and your soup cools down—but never the reverse?
That’s entropy in action.
It’s the second law of thermodynamics: in a closed system, disorder tends to increase. The world naturally moves toward chaos. Making a mess is easy—cleaning it up takes effort and energy.
So why does this matter for climate action?
Carbon stored in fossil fuels—coal, oil, or in forests—is in a low-entropy, concentrated state. When we burn it, we convert it into high-entropy CO₂, escaping through an exhaust pipe, and then spreading it throughout the atmosphere. What was once dense and orderly becomes diffuse and disorderly. That’s entropy at work.
To keep the planet from overheating, we must reduce the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. There are three main strategies to do this:
- Avoid emissions by not burning fossil fuels or forests in the first place.
- Reduce emissions at the source, using cleaner technologies or capturing carbon during combustion.
- Remove CO₂ from the atmosphere after it’s already been released.
Entropy makes the hierarchy of these options clear.
Avoiding emissions requires no extra energy—it prevents the disorder from happening. Reducing emissions at the source takes more effort, but still works with a relatively concentrated system. But removing CO₂ once it’s scattered throughout the atmosphere is the most energy-intensive path—it means fighting against entropy, trying to re-concentrate what nature has already spread out.
Paradoxically, however, it is precisely these high-entropy reversal efforts that are often labelled as “high quality”—while calling more entropy-aligned actions like avoidance and reduction “low quality”. This valorizes the act of fighting entropy, even if it’s energetically and economically irrational.
In science fiction such as Star Trek, we imagine futures where this doesn’t matter—where energy is infinite, machines can reassemble matter from energy, and entropy can be reversed at will.
But in today’s reality, energy is limited. And much of newly installed renewable energy is already being swallowed up by data centers and AI systems. We’re not reversing entropy. We’re just moving it around—creating new kinds of waste in the process.
This is the Entropy Paradox: In our attempt to remove the visible signs of disorder, we create deeper, more systemic forms of it. We fight nature’s laws to restore order—only to amplify the chaos we meant to eliminate.
In this series, two leading authorities in carbon uncover the secrets and contradictions of an entire industry – in the most fun and engaging way. Through 32 curated Carbon Paradoxes, you'll learn everything essential about this field, starting with the tensions we must address to make environmental markets thrive.
This article is also published on carbonparadox.org. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
