PB April 2023 April 2023 65
L
et’s take ExxonMobil. Even it has
committed to net-zero emissions by 2050,
indicating it will run its business on
renewable power and halt the release of
natural gas at drilling sites. But this is all
about its internal operations, it’s going to ignore
the implications of selling all the oil and gas it
does.
But it’s not just that some firms deny the pollutant
core of what they do, more are heedless of how
useless their strategies are.
Meanwhile, when you book a flight, you will
invariably see a checkbox oering to oset the
carbon emissions for the low price of one or two
quid. For example according to Ryanair, its
customers can oset their emissions in two ways
by:
“Contributing €2 to partially oset emissions, or
by using the company’s new Carbon Calculator to
fully oset emissions. Our Carbon Calculator,
launched in July 2021, determines the carbon
emissions per passenger In 2019, 3% of its
customers chose to oset. It costs 78 cent to oset
the 486km journey from Dublin to London”.
You’d need to be wide-eyed to believe in Exxon or
Ryanair but it turns out even designated commercial
do-gooders are suspect.
A recent report in the Guardian noted that “the
forest carbon osets approved by the world’s
leading provider, Verra, used by Disney,
Shell,Gucciand other big corporations are largely
worthless and could make global heating worse”.
For example, only a handful of Verra’s rainforest
projects showed evidence of deforestation
reductions, largely because they overestimated the
likely deforestation that would have occurred
without Verra’s intervention, according to two
studies, with further analysis indicating that 94%
Corporate Net-Zero
targets are mostly
Greenwash
By Adam Boland
ENVIRONMENT
66 April 2023 April 2023 PB
idea that we can substitute aorestation for the
reduction of present and future emissions is
fantastical.
According to The Lancet Planetary Health,
theGlobal Northis responsible for 92% of “excess”
carbon emissions which means those beyond what
The Lancet considers fair under a complex system.
Why, then, do we think it is sustainable to shift
responsibility for climate action to people who have
done little to cause the problem, even as they
struggle with the consequences?
Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, told the
Guardian thatosettingcan be valuable only if
companies are already cutting their carbon
emissions by at least half each decade, from now
to reaching net zero in 2050. They can buy osets
as an additional eort but not as a substitute for
those stringent emission-reduction requirements.
So, if not osetting, then what should you do to
help the environment? You’ve heard it all before.
Protest in the streets, and reduce your meat intake,
driving and flying.
If you do keep osetting, don’t simply check the
box. Do your research and find out where your
money will be best spent.
Only a handful of the rainforest projects managed
by the world’s leading provider of carbon offsetting
showed evidence of deforestation reductions
of the credits had no benefit to the climate.
According toMcKinsey, the market for voluntary
carbon credits could be worth upward of $50 billion
by 2030. We constantly hear that some huge
multinational corporation has ‘pledged to go net
zero’. Almost all of these companies plan on using
osets to achieve this. It is worth, then, knowing a
bit more about what osets actually are, and
whether they actually work.
In a nutshell, osetting is when carbon emissions
are sequestered, avoided or reduced in one location
to compensate for carbon that was emitted
somewhere else. In other words, the emitter pays
for someone else to take climate action so that they
can continue to emit.
Osetting is usually done through the planting
of trees (known as afforestation), or the
development of renewable energy infrastructure.
While both of these things are worth doing, they
need to be done in addition to reducing carbon
emissions at source, not instead of it.
Offsetting is the modern equivalent of
indulgences in the Catholic Church. In both cases,
those with resources can purchase a permit which
allows them to sin with impunity. The dierence is
that with carbon osets, those without resources
are left to pick up the slack.
Osetting is a form of neocolonialism in which
the rich emit all the carbon they like, then – in the
classic case – pay the poor a pittance to plant trees
on their own land as a form of absolution, since the
land and labour in these countries is much cheaper
as a result of colonial injustices.
There is little oversight when it comes to ensuring
that the trees actually make it to maturity without
being logged or burned in a forest fire. That means
that carbon is being counted as sequestered that
may still be in the atmosphere,
making it much more dicult
for experts to accurately
ascertain the severity of the
challenge.
What’s more, when
assurances are actually put in
place to prevent logging, it is
often to the detriment of local
indigenous communities.
People who have been building
homes from lumber for
thousands of years are
suddenly hit with fines for
cutting down trees on their own
land because corrupt
government ocials have sold
that land to osetting projects
without consulting the people
who actually live there.
It is also worth mentioning
that there is not enough land on
earth to absorb all the carbon
we have emitted to date
through aorestation, so the
‘wshing

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