Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

> the overwhelming majority of emissions is actually in developed countries.

This is true, but the low hanging fruit (in terms of cost) in terms of drawdown might be developing countries, where things like birth control, paying farmer not to cut down rainforest, etc can be done inexpensively.

There's also a lot of low hanging fruits in developped countries, better farming techniques, electric cars, heat insulation, financing renewables depending of the electric mix, making food products with less emissions cheaper for consumers to shift consumption...

It's true that the state has the upper hand but there's also things that an NGO or a private company could do.

Curious about someone in the industry's opinion, but the problem sounds like carbon offsets should actually be treated as carbon offset futures.

I.e. the value is determined at the time of delivered carbon offsets, and the instrument's price floats on the market before that time, including relative to how likely / valuable the delivery is

If company A buys a carbon offset from entity X, and it becomes increasingly apparent that entity X isn't going to be able to deliver the face value in terms of carbon, the instrument bought by company A should decrease in value.

Consequently, next time around, company A would not purchase from entity X.

Which is exactly what you'd want to happen!

Corollary: Verification by third party should be required, with less measurable schemes less valued.

Multiple satellites confirming forests intact? Proof. Direct air capture or weathering? Proof.

Some nebulous walk through how this might have influenced this other thing? Eh...

> lobbying in favor of carbon taxes

This is deeply unpopular with the electorate, and for very good reason.

When the only "solution" to "fighting" global warming is to levy more taxes on the middle class, increase food and construction costs, and cripple developing nations' ability to build industry -- when elites fly around the world on private jets (that spew more CO2 in 6 hours than I will create in 10 years), and "researchers" rake in grant money based on promoting apocalyptic levels of fear -- well... put it like this: If you want right-wing populist governments, that's how you're going to get them.

Not really, because most carbon credits are based on counterfactuals - would this forest have been logged if you didn't protect it, would this farmer have used less efficient practices if you hadn't paid them, would this land have remained empty if you hadn't paid to plant trees, etc. No matter how reputable the rating agency is, they still won't be able to answer these questions very accurately.

Additionally, when you purchase a credit you're generally purchasing a prediction of how much carbon might be absorbed in the future. For a afforestation credit, you're often purchasing the amount of carbon that forest will absorb over 100 years. No rating agency can legitimately tell you that your forest isn't going to burn down or be logged in the next century. It's a pretty ridiculous idea - the seller, purchaser, and rating agency will all probably not exist after 100 years, and the government of whatever country the forest is in will probably have been overthrown.

I think contributing money to protect and rewild nature in the interest of increasing carbon sequestration is a great idea that should continue, but nobody should be receiving offsets that they weigh 1-to-1 against their actual real-world emissions. It just isn't a meaningful comparison. Even if your purchase actually makes an impact, it's like dumping toxic chemicals into a river and setting aside money to fund an organization that will gradually clean up the river over the next century, and then claiming that you've now achieved net-zero pollution.