Climate change news bit: We have a faux carbon credit industry

Gadzooks!! Shades of cryptocurrency collapse. The Guardian writes about a newly discovered scam by pro-pollution forces to deceive us:

The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation.

The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions.

The analysis raises questions over the credits bought by a number of internationally renowned companies – some of them have labelled their products “carbon neutral”, or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.

The article goes on to point out that Verra routinely lies about the degree of deforestation in its projects so that it can claim success when a deforestation impact is found. For example, in 32 projects where it was possible to compare Verra’s claims with data, baseline scenarios of forest loss were overstated by about 400%. About 94% of Verra’s claimed deforestation effects are non-existent.

Not surprisingly, Verra strongly denies this and points to errors in the analysis. The predictable bickering has commenced. This is how standard capitalist propaganda efforts work. The capitalists always attack inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning, and then present faux facts, truths and reasoning that supports the pro-pollution status quo. That is just business as usual. 

Maybe if polluting businesses, e.g., ExxonMobil, had not been lying about climate change for decades and quietly blocking government efforts to act by corrupting government, then the polluters might deserve some credibility here. But in view of their pro-pollution for profit track record, they deserve no credibility at all.

Once again, the morality of capitalism, profits above all else, are there for everyone to see. At the rate we are going, the climate and tens of thousands of species, maybe including humans, are going to bite the dust. If we do off ourselves in a fit of self-annihilation, let’s mostly blame (~95%) the Republican Party, ExxonMobil and other pro-pollution and pro-climate change forces.