No Offsets!
Carbon Trading has failed.
Time to get real (zero).
CLARA regrets that so much time and energy had been focused on trying to prop up carbon trading platforms. The voluntary carbon markets tried to save themselves with ‘integrity initiatives’, but those failed to get traction. ‘High-integrity’ REDD+ credits are sold to oil companies so they can continue to drill and pollute.
Carbon markets have consistently failed to deliver meaningful mitigation benefits. They have failed to help communities flourish. These markets depend on the failed concept of ‘fungibility’ - the idea that a ton of carbon from a smokestack is the same as a ton of carbon in the forest, and that those can be traded with one another. This creates perverse land management incentives based on valuing carbon above all other ecosystem services.
The use of offsets is clearly inconsistent with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. Their use hasn’t influenced the pace or direction of decarbonization efforts. The dangerous concept of ‘abatement’ via offsets continues to surface in the UNFCCC.
Collected here are materials about the demonstrated failings of carbon markets as a climate solution. CLARA calls out the fact that carbon markets aren’t an effective form of climate finance, and don’t help us meet the Paris Agreement temperature goal.
CLARA developed story-boards about how carbon offset markets impact communities. Please find those resources here.
Additional pages linked below feature CLARA publications and news reports dealing with the dangers in the promotion and use of carbon offset markets.
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The IPCC’s recent assessment finds that the remaining carbon budget enabling us to stay below 1. 5 °C of warming almost certainly runs out in the next ten years. That means emissions must decline to zero – or as close to zero as possible – before that budget is exceeded. Any ongoing emissions use up the remaining carbon budget. Offsets don’t change that.
Read more - The 1.5 °C Goal, carbon budgets, and the madness of offsets
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Carbon markets do not result in climate mitigation gains. The buyers of carbon credits are purchasing a commodity – the right to continue polluting. The market itself provides no guarantee that the climate-mitigating activities on which the credits are based – like planting trees -- will actually be carried out over a long enough time to achieve the climate benefits that are supposed to compensate for the offset buyer’s ongoing emissions.
Read more – Climate Finance and Carbon Colonialism
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Two major research efforts in 2023 revealed the disregard for standards, dubious accounting, and outright fraud associated with carbon crediting schemes.
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