Carbon Credits
We keep inventing things that are ostensibly meant to save the planet but are actually meant to save capitalism and the way of life it has created.
Switzerland made a bold statement regarding climate change. They are going to be carbon neutral by 2030. They are certain of it.
Part of the emission problem is because western nations will just not sacrifice the degree of convenience that they have become used to. The statement might make you think that the Swiss are really nice people and they are willing to make hard choices. Think again.
But the Swiss don’t intend to reduce emissions by that much within their own borders. Instead, the European country is dipping into its sizable coffers to pay poorer nations, like Ghana or Dominica, to reduce emissions there — and give Switzerland credit for it.
Here is an example of how it would work: Switzerland is paying to install efficient lighting and cleaner stoves in up to five million households in Ghana; these installations would help households move away from burning wood for cooking and rein in greenhouse gas emissions.
Then Switzerland, not Ghana, will get to count those emissions reductions as progress toward its climate goals.
Source: New York Times
First, you pollute for 300 years in the name of progress.
Then you realize that you cannot stop polluting.
You are incapable of changing your way of life.
Each person in your country will continue to consume as much as 20 in another.
So you are going to generously put the burden of offsetting that emission on those very people who do not consume as much.
**slow clap**
This is carbon imperialism.
The entire carbon credit/carbon offset business is a fraud. Only it will not affect any investor. It will only affect the poor so there is no need to worry.
After making this emphatic claim in the headline, Bloomberg in the second para writes…
In an analysis of 337 million carbon credits intended to prevent deforestation, Sylvera said 143 million, or more than 40%, are “high quality,” achieving its top three grades in an assessment covering factors such as a credit’s contribution to avoiding or removing CO2, as well as the permanence of such actions.
Source: Bloomberg
Damn it! It means 60% of it is bordering on fraud. What did you want it to be? 90%??
This is even before we start tearing up the methodology of the study and what “high quality” really means. And then the statistical gymnastics to arrive at 40%.
A whistleblower who spent years working on the integrity of the Australian government’s carbon credit system has launched an extraordinary attack on the scheme, describing it as a fraud that is hurting the environment and has wasted more than $1bn in taxpayer funding.
Prof Andrew Macintosh, the former head of the government’s Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, said the growing carbon market overseen by the government and the Clean Energy Regulator was “largely a sham” as most of the carbon credits approved did not represent real or new cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
[…]
Macintosh, an environment law and policy professor at the Australian National University, said all major methods approved by the government to create carbon credits had “serious integrity issues, either in their design or the way they are being administered”.
This particularly applied to projects for regrowing native forests in cleared areas. Known as “human-induced regeneration”, it is the most popular method used to create carbon credits. Landholders using the method have signed contracts with the government worth an estimated $1.5bn.
Macintosh and his colleagues analysed 119 human-induced regeneration projects in New South Wales and Queensland. They found that despite the government issuing 17.5m carbon credits to these projects – with each credit meant to represent one tonne of carbon dioxide absorbed by growing trees – the total forest area had barely increased.
Source: Gaurdian
While the actions of countries like Switzerland are criminal. There is also a lot of greenwashing that takes place. When countries go out looking for enough carbon offsets there are often not enough to be found. They turn to dubious manipulation of facts. If you cannot plant a billion trees just find a place that already has a billion trees, pay them some money and call it carbon offset.
The example above refers to this practice.
Carbon Credits have become a means of virtue signaling. Every company, organization, or country that claims it will reach “Net-Zero” by any date is hoping to have enough carbon credits by that time. None of them are going to change their ways.
When Apple talks about Net Zero what do they mean? That not an ounce of metal will be used in any of their products? Even the best-intentioned miner cannot produce any metal or for that matter recycle any metal without causing pollution/emission. They just mean they will find someone who can sell them carbon credits.
Ultimately, reducing emissions needs disciple, it needs sacrifice.
Carbon Credits will not save us from climate change. They will not work because you are trying to palm off discipline to the other. Just because you cannot cut down on emissions you want others to plant trees and you buy it as credits
It is a little like buying cholesterol credits. Just because you cannot eat right you make someone else run 8 KM and take credit for it.
Does not work with cholesterol. Will not work with climate.