A large number of carbon credit projects are claiming to preserve land that is already being protected by Brazilian conservation efforts, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Over the past two decades, so-called “carbon cowboys,” people who set up carbon credit initiatives for financial gain, have launched land preservation projects across the Amazon rainforest, generating carbon credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars and building a thinly regulated market valued at nearly $11 billion worldwide, according to The Washington Post. The Brazilian government’s anti-deforestation policies already safeguarded more than 78,000 square miles of land used for preservation projects before they were claimed for carbon credits, and 29 of the 35 internationally certified projects in the Amazon overlap with public lands, meaning a large percentage of carbon credits overlap with already existent conservation measures.
The estimated total value of the offsets sold by these 29 ventures is $212 million, according to an analysis performed by The Washington Post using annual market rates. Multi-billion dollar companies like Netflix, Delta Air Lines, Spotify, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Boeing are just a few of the major corporations that purchased these credits in order to offset their emissions.
Corporations like these also purchase carbon credits as a way of improving their environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, according to veteran energy consultant David Blackmon.
“Most carbon credit trading systems amount to wealth transfer schemes designed to benefit the very rich elites and provide near-zero or absolute zero benefit to the environment,” Blackmon told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “For the most part, companies buy these credits for the simple fact that they are forced to do so either by wrong-headed government regulations or by ESG demands from green investors and financial institutions.”
Dutch political commentator, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, on the WEF’s plan to impose a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID, under the guise of tackling the imaginary “climate crisis”:
“The CEO of one of the largest Dutch banks said, if everyone gets individual personal… pic.twitter.com/l7fenuQdXd
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) October 21, 2023
Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, raised questions about the industry’s lack of regulation and accounting standards, which he says leaves wiggle room for interested parties to manipulate the fledgling market.
“There’s virtually no standards, and those that exist are made up by the players themselves,” Kish told the DCNF. “This is simply white collar crime which ends up costing consumers more because it drives up the cost of products needlessly and keeps people in third world countries poor as it seizes the value of the lands that could be providing them with a better future for their children. It’s green imperialism making some people rich at the expense of poor people.”
On June 5th, three carbon offset projects in Brazil were targeted by federal police for allegedly netting almost $35 million in improper carbon credit sales, according to The Washington Post. The investigation, titled the “Greenwashing Operation,” involved nearly two dozen companies and led to the arrests of five people, including Ricardo Stoppe, the owner of five REDD+ projects in the Amazon, which were designed to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, according to American conservation news site Mongabay.
Despite the crackdowns, Kish remains skeptical that the multinational corporations purchasing carbon credits will ever admit fault.
“It’s a big con game… the companies who buy [carbon offsets] are simply buying virtue signaling, so they don’t actually care, and when the con is revealed they will act surprised,” Kish told the DCNF.
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