That you could pay a company to cleanse your environmental sins probably sounds absurd. Yet, this concept underpins every carbon neutrality pledge out there. Environmental virtue itself is being commodified and commercialised in a carbon marketplace, and we are calling that 'Green'. Really?
For all the reasons I've listed in this post and beyond, promoting carbon offsets as a way to be 'green' is not only counterproductive, but also ridiculously unjust.
Carbon Offsets are designed to be an 'easy way out' of a crisis that will never be easy. While it is true that the price of offsets will incentivise at-source reduction, greenwashing this process in a pretty 'Net Zero' PR campaign only slows down the progress.
Some of the resources that I found helpful:
- Short video by Our Changing Climate on Carbon Offsets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdW-6MXB0sI
- Article by Greenpeace UK on why carbon offsets don't always work: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the-biggest-problem-with-carbon-offsetting-is-that-it-doesnt-really-work/
- Short piece: "Avoiding 'carbon colonialism': Developing nations can't pay the price for pollution", The Hill https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/550313-avoiding-carbon-colonialism#:~:text=They are carbon colonialism.,GHG out of the atmosphere
- Short Medium article outlining other problems with carbon offsets: https://medium.com/climate-conscious/three-overlooked-problems-with-carbon-offsets-412d59b668f6
- Full report by The Oakland Institute on "Carbon Colonialism: Failure of Green Resources’ Carbon Offset Project in Uganda": https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/uganda_carbon_colonialism.pdf
- Why Net Zero is a greenwashed scam: https://grain.org/en/article/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud#sdfootnote6sym
