Carbon markets are a fairytale. In this fantasy, everything in the world would be fine if Big Polluters bought credits to commit environmental crimes. Clearly, it is a strategy for avoiding accountability: trying to blur Big Polluters’ responsibility to reduce their emissions and the responsibility of governments around the world to enforce their national laws to protect their forests and people.
The very entities that have fueled the climate crisis are pretending to find a magic trick using the same weapons that got us here. The environmental debt that Big Polluters owe the planet is plain to see and is already unpayable. What do you mean, they can still buy credits to commit more crimes? And the exponentially accumulating environmental liability? It is climate fraud! Carbon markets intend to negotiate offsets, selling credits for invisible atoms that have not been emitted, to guarantee Big Polluters the supposed right to continue polluting as usual — postponing for a little longer what is non-negotiable, undeniable and urgent: reduce and eliminate their stratospheric emissions.
Such offsets do not reduce global atmospheric concentrations of CO2, but divert the attention of emitters and governments to supposed projects that would in no way compensate for the growth in emissions and all the accumulated damage on the planet. We would need two planet Earths to offset the astronomical emissions of oil companies and agribusiness. As the U.N. climate negotiations begin this week, the world cannot allow these criminals to continue their manipulation, buying a free pass to destroy. Future credits do not bring back all the life already destroyed on the planet, nor do they hold those responsible for the crimes committed.
Know more:
Chasing Carbon Unicorns: The deception of carbon markets and “net zero”- Friends of the Earth Internacional: https://bit.ly/3CF3ZZS
