Cambridge study says carbon offsets are not nearly as effective as they claim to be.
All I’ve seen since carbon offsets became a thing is how a lot of the projects were either ineffective or outright scams. The idea itself doesn’t incentivise the large carbon producers to actually reduce their emissions, but simply pay to say they are carbon neutral so they can slap it on their website for some positive pr.
I farm in Canada which has a carbon tax, $65/ton. We’re in the grip of terrible drought and I’ve sold all my livestock. Thought maybe I could do the world a little good and maybe make some money off my empty pastures by planting some trees or something.
After talking to the regulators it was obvious it’s a HUGE fraud. There’s so much red tape, and by the time you’re done talking to them you find out that you can make $1-5/ton for sequestering carbon. And due to flat fees in the regulatory structure, it’s really just designed to funnel this money to huge landowners and not to encourage anyone who cares to plant trees or do anything really.
So working Canadians are forced to pay $65/ton to heat their homes and drive to work, but big emitters buy bogus credits for under $5 and continue to pour out pollution while claiming to be “carbon neutral”. It’s the Canadian way
In this particular case it’s “maybe”… I farm on the edge of the Palliser Triangle, famous for drought cycles over the centuries.
However climate change is definitely shifting the dynamics of the seasons here, with rainfall getting front-loaded into the “useless” months from February - May and scarcely a drop during the summer when we need it. It’s the same volume or possibly even more but it’s useless for crops or pastures.
I’ve pivoted to selling hay as it’s capable of growing decently off of the runoff pulse. Those with suitable land are going all in on irrigation as the spring runoff can be stored in lakes and reservoirs. It’s an odd situation here as the ground often stays frozen until after the snow melts, so very little snow water soaks in.
If you really want to to some good with that land, although it won’t make you any money, turn it back into a native natural habitat, or at least sell it to someone who will agree to do the same. The world is never going to improve without landowners who are willing to restore their developed land back to its natural state.
It already is! We’re proud to maintain our pastures in their native state and we grazed them rotationally with long rest to emulate the way the buffalo used to graze them long ago. They’re a mix of grass, brush, trees and slough. Even though my stock is gone we plan to background some steers or heifers occasionally just for the sake of the land as it needs grazing. However this will allow us to plan grazing around the grass instead of being forced to put our own animals out for need of feed.
That was part of the reason I initially thought I could get some carbon offset credits simply for maintaining them in that state, because we are supposed to be encouraging people to maintain wild prairie, and the land does soak up significant carbon every year just by doing its natural thing.
However as mentioned the system is a fraud. The only way to get carbon credits is to break it up and then rewild it after the damage has been done. They told me I could easily generate credits this way by destroying my native habitat and then replanting it… Which is absolutely a crime against nature.
Carbon credits are a racket, tell your friends
simply pay to say they are carbon neutral so they can slap it on their website for some positive pr.
and go further back, and the whole idea of “carbon footprint” was a scam from the get go.
It’s scams and distractions all the way down, anything and everything to make sure people don’t look at the real cause of the problem - those making all the money and the system that enables and encourages them at the expense of the rest of us.
If the cost was actually enough to store the CO2 they emit (and offset the other environmental damages from the sequestration), then it would be fine. But it would be so costly for some industries, that positive PR wouldn’t offset the cost.
The most effective carbon sinks are peatlands. the approx. 3 Mio. km2 in Canada sequester 370 Million Tonnes of Carbon a year.
Canada alone emitted 679 Million Tonnes in 2022, with a population of just about 30 Million people.
There is simply no capacity to offset the emissions we have, even with radical land transformation. The only way is to drastically cut emissions and cut them fast.
Even if they worked, it’s like someone breaking your arm and then paying the hospital bill and calling it a day.
No, it’s nothing like that. Nature doesn’t care if a given gram of co2 was recently released or not. It only cares about the sum total. If the carbon capture schemes actually did grab a gram for every gram released, and then keep it stored for at least a century, that’d work fine.
It’s just that they almost certainly don’t. They’re way too cheap for the best capture systems we have, and they’re not necessarily sequestering that carbon to keep it out of the atmosphere for more than a few years.
We are almost certainly going to need actual carbon sequestration. We’re too close to emitting too much already.
When discussing carbon offsets with the regulator I asked if the buyers would get a refund if their chunk of carbon offset forest burned down in a forest fire.
He laughed and said they should but there’s not a chance, because the system only exists to legitimize emissions. In fact many of them have already burned. And that’s right from a government agent.
Kelp farming or ocean seeding are the only natural carbon capture that make sense, but we aren’t doing them. That and paying people not to destroy existing forests and grasslands, but that seems hard to sell as well.
Offsets are a game of 3 card monte.
The carbon is still released. We’ll never win.
And the dealer gets the money.
To surprise of no one… I thought it was clear that it is only a marketing fantasy to scam those who don’t understand how nature works
They are doing their job if that job is to make money for the people selling them.
…its been a scam the entire time. it was a way for rich people to pay the poor people to shut up about ruining the planet, and nothing more. Not sure why anyone ever thought this was going to be effective. taxing pollution does NOTHING to stop it.
