The Carbon Offsetting Wild West

By Paul Homewood

The Telegraph has an investigative report into carbon offsets today, unfortunately paywalled. For those who can access it, it is here.

The report claims that customers are at risk of being ripped off in a “Wild West” unregulated carbon market, and that in many cases the schemes may not be offsetting emissions at all.

It includes this video, which gives a glimpse into the abuse of the system.

Just to pick some of the points raised in the story, it is claimed that many offsetting projects which claim to prevent deforestation or plant trees have had the opposite effect. For instance, saplings dying because of droughts and forests ripped up by the Cambodian army or Brazilian gold miners.

Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, said: “It’s bad enough that big carbon emitters like airliners are using offsetting as a license to pollute, but they often encourage their customers to join in the greenwash too.

“Passengers are given the impression that, by coughing up a few quid, they can magic away the planet-heating gases from their flights. But what customers aren’t told is that this market is an unregulated wild west and there’s little evidence that offsetting schemes generally work.

“The best and safest way to reduce carbon emissions remains not to produce them in the first place.”

Meanwhile studies have shown that around three quarters of projects do not provide any environmental gain because they would have happened anyway.

I really don’t understand why any of this has come as a shock, as it was all so predictable. If you chuck millions of pounds at developing countries no questions asked, you should not be surprised if they just take the money and carry on as before, looking after their own interest.

Even if the political will was there, in countries like Madagascar, where the video was shot, government officials have very little power or resource to lay down the law in these sort of remote, rural areas.

And in many cases, the West is merely paying for things that would have been done anyway.

I have long held the view anyway that the whole offsetting industry is little more than a virtue signalling sham.

The Telegraph complains that customers are being ripped off. But most probably don’t actually care whether their money pays for a tree to be planted or not. All they really care about is the warm glow that paying for their indulgences gives them. After all, if they really cared about carbon dioxide emissions, they would not have even taken that air flight in the first place.

And this is particularly the case for the likes of airlines and oil companies, for whom offsets allow them to carry on business as usual whilst burnishing their green credentials.