Callous Carbon Credit Climate Con

Effectively, a carbon credit exchange officially allows a participating company a government sanctioned permit to emit a specified amount of greenhouse gas provided it sufficiently supports – by purchasing carbon “offset” credits – an entity that that engages in an activity to reduce carbon emissions (like a tree farm). The credit is specifically calculated based on tons of greenhouse emissions to be applied against calculations of tons of offsetting absorption of greenhouse gasses.  Such carbon credit systems can be set up internationally: 

“The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is one of the systems introduced under the [1992] Kyoto Protocol to help developing countries create sustainable development projects and enable Annex 1 countries [richer countries with a historical responsibility for climate change] to achieve emissions targets by purchasing carbon credits.

“Accredited CDM projects are awarded a Certified Emissions Reduction (CER) credit for each tonne of CO2e avoided. The CERs are also referred to as carbon offsets and are bought by businesses seeking to comply with the EU ETS [European Union Emissions Trading System] and other regional schemes (compliance buyers) and traders, brokers and fund managers (speculators) as well as by Annex 1 governments (sovereign buyers).” Native.eco  

Or non-international governmental transaction within individual nations. California has created an in-state carbon credit system, but one which does not bear scrutiny upon detailed analysis. Refineries that emit gasses (there are several within Los Angeles County, mostly near the harbor area) are obvious customers. California has traditionally found offsetting growers of carbon emission trees and plants, such as the Eddie Ranch in Mendocino with rich forest assets. Indeed, according to Evan Halper (writing for the September 19th Los Angeles Times), in 2018 Eddie Ranch petitioned the state to be accorded the right to sell that cherished offset carbon credits to polluters. Millions of dollars worth. Well, the application looked pretty good. On paper. But in reality… 

“As fire ripped through the Mendocino County hills the summer of 2018, burning a vast expanse of forest and turning buildings to ash, a curious thing was happening at Eddie Ranch, a sprawling property scorched by the flames… Its owners were petitioning the state to allow it to be paid millions to preserve trees destroyed by the inferno.

“Eddie Ranch said the trees would fight climate change, asserting in its application for California’s carbon ‘offset’ program that they would absorb some 280,890 tons of greenhouse gases. Polluters use the program to outsource their obligations to fight global warming: The credits purchased from faraway forests allow them to claim that the greenhouse gases they release at their facilities are not hurting the planet… The bulk of the Eddie Ranch carbon credits would be bought by PBF Energy, which was looking to erase — on paper — emissions from its hulking oil refineries in Torrance and Martinez [California] and the gasoline they sell to the motoring public.

“Incinerated trees, of course, can’t help the climate. But months after the 2018 fire that burned enough of Eddie Ranch to make nearly all of its planned carbon credits useless in the fight against global warming, the state of California allowed the operation to sell those credits to polluters, basing its decision on the state of the ranch before the fire…

“Eddie Ranch was one more puzzling transaction at a time the state’s entire multibillion-dollar market of carbon offsets — most of them generated in distant forests — is under siege… To comprehend what went down at Eddie Ranch, said Grayson Badgley, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and Black Rock Forest in New York’s Hudson Valley, ‘imagine a general contractor finalizing the sale of a soon-to-be-completed home while the house under construction is actually in flames.’

“California is leading the world in confronting climate change. Its push toward renewable electricity is inspiring other states and countries to step up their goals. The state’s strict rules on tailpipe emissions and its plans to ban sales of new gas-powered cars and SUVs by 2035 are forcing the auto industry to reckon with its outsize role in global warming…. Yet the opaque carbon trading scheme that is a linchpin of the state’s climate efforts — California is leaning on it to meet as much as half of its greenhouse gas reductions — is under serious strain at home even as it is getting copied far beyond California.

“The U.S. Senate in late June passed a measure that would substantially expand the market for government-certified offset credits, helping farmers sell them to polluters for practices that many scientists worry won’t help the climate. Such credits could allow the owner of a refinery or plastics factory or power plant in one part of the country to pollute more if they give a farming operation in another part of the country money to tend to their soil in a certain way or use specific types of manure.

“The state of Washington is launching a carbon market modeled after California’s, and China is opening its own marketplace. Both allow companies to pollute more if they pay faraway landowners to plant and preserve trees… Meanwhile, an unregulated cottage industry of firms selling credits to corporations eager to brand as ‘carbon-neutral’ is exploding in the U.S., peddling offset projects that many experts warn quite frequently are not soaking up the greenhouse gases claimed.” Farmers (heavily from conservative communities) are obviously lobbying Congress and state legislatures to support this bizarre trading system, even though it is fraught with inefficiencies that call into question the very nation of the concept. But as we are witnessing the ravages of climate change, it seems pretty obvious that we are kidding ourselves that this is remotely a good way to deal with an issue that is profoundly out of control. 

“‘One of the insidious aspects of the [California] program is it hooks conservation and Indigenous groups on a source of funds,’ said Neil Tangri, who in February resigned in protest from his post as the environmental justice representative on the state’s offset task force. ‘So you have a constituency that will fight for this program whether or not it is doing anything meaningful in a larger sense… They may be using the money for good things,’ Tangri said. ‘But in the end, it is a Ponzi scheme.’” Halper. The problem is the trading exchange itself.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you want to contain greenhouse gasses, ban the emissions and reward the absorbing businesses… separately!!!!