Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

* The company who wants a certificate saying they offset their carbon usage - the certificate being useful for publicity, and possibly tax breaks/subsidies. They care just about the certificate, not about offsetting carbon.

* The tree planting (or whatever way they are offsetting) company. They just want to claim they planted the tree. Nobody else is really checking to see if they planted the trees, if these trees were only planted for one offset contract, and five years later if the trees hit maturity.

* The company handing out the certificates. They match a claim from a tree-planting company with a certificate buying company. They don't really care that the carbon was offset. In fact, the larger their record of past projects, the bigger clients they can score in the future. So they have every incentive not to look too closely at the tree planter. Just to print out a certificate with minimal oversight.

In such a market, is the TFA result surprising.

Shrug, if it's all BS but it does something to the mind-bogglingly skewed wealth distribution[1] we can still chalk it up as a win.

[1] https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?si=90mDv90g1mq6-a0T

Thats 2 liters (large coke bottle) of oil per person in the world per day, and when burned turns into 3000 liters of CO2 (about the volume of a large couch).

If everyone produced a couch-size piece of any other kind of junk each day, within a week the streets would be jammed with couches. But because it's invisible gas, life goes on as if we're not making a huge mess.