Climate regulations pose a challenge for governments as they want to be seen doing the right thing, while also avoiding any negative impact on their economy. Consequently, these regulations often result in a significant increase in paperwork, but do not have a substantial effect on the actual situation on the ground. At least we have made a start and hopefully the regulations will keep evolving further to make a meaningful impact after all.
My role requires a lot of discussion and navigation around carbon offsets and credits. This is an incredibly helpful explainer I’m immediately sharing with others. Thank you!
Carbon offsets and promises of ‘net-zero’ are used in similar ways to the failed carbon credit trading system, namely so that corporations can pretend that they are changing their behaviour while maintaining business as usual. It is clever accounting to avoid meaningful changes. I would take any claims of ‘net-zero’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ with a huge grain of salt until the company actually shows you evidence of massively cutting their own emissions.
Whist I have been aware of most of this stuff for quite a while, I could never have written it up with such clarity. Brilliant. Thankyou. Maurice
Glad :)
Climate regulations pose a challenge for governments as they want to be seen doing the right thing, while also avoiding any negative impact on their economy. Consequently, these regulations often result in a significant increase in paperwork, but do not have a substantial effect on the actual situation on the ground. At least we have made a start and hopefully the regulations will keep evolving further to make a meaningful impact after all.
My role requires a lot of discussion and navigation around carbon offsets and credits. This is an incredibly helpful explainer I’m immediately sharing with others. Thank you!
Carbon offsets and promises of ‘net-zero’ are used in similar ways to the failed carbon credit trading system, namely so that corporations can pretend that they are changing their behaviour while maintaining business as usual. It is clever accounting to avoid meaningful changes. I would take any claims of ‘net-zero’ or ‘carbon-neutral’ with a huge grain of salt until the company actually shows you evidence of massively cutting their own emissions.
Good intro but would have been good to point to initiatives such as the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (https://www.iif.com/tsvcm)
Thank you for bringing this to notice :)
A good overview of the drawbacks of carbon offsetting.