-The science of human-caused climate change is fairly straightforward.

When we emit greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, those molecules trap heat in the atmosphere and raise global temperatures.

-It's possible that we could have very serious changes in global climate and effects on agriculture and effects on societies.

-We know we need to cut emissions in half by 2030 to avoid pushing our systems past a dangerous brink.

-While most of us want to save the planet by curbing emissions, we also enjoy living in a consumer society.

How do we get industries to pollute less without driving those industries out of business?

-One popular strategy to do this, especially among corporations and governments of wealthy nations, is carbon trading.

A market-based system that aims to provide economic incentives for countries and businesses to reduce their environmental footprint.

-We've all come across some form of taxes or extra charges for using plastic bags, coffee cups, and of course, the optional carbon footprint charges when you buy a flight.

This is a much larger market for even larger polluters.

-There are different forms of carbon trading, but the basic premise is to give polluters a way to keep emitting carbon in one place by paying to reduce it somewhere else.

-Company A wants to cut its carbon emissions.

Company B is financing a project, say, building a wind farm or switching from coal to solar plants.

Then a broker matches those offsets with a buyer like company A.

Company B gets their money for their projects, and company A gets closer to meeting its emission goals.

-Here's the problem, carbon markets don't reduce emissions at the source, thus continuing to impact environments and communities.

The system perpetuates our reliance on fossil fuels and makes things worse.

-A report in 2015 found that an estimated 80% of sustainable projects under the trading scheme were questionable, enabling emissions to increase by roughly 600 million metric tons.

-Research has shown that the world needs to keep 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves in the ground to prevent a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in global average temperature.

That's going to take major changes in the way businesses operate.

Carbon offsets aren't the solution.

Let's look at carbon offset markets.

Say you're a company in California that wants to or is required to go green, but you don't want to change your production model to lower emissions because it'll affect your profit margins.

You could purchase carbon credits that fund a protected forest in the Amazon, which absorbs greenhouse gases, or you can pay to develop a new solar project that replaces fossil fuel use in Nevada.

You can then count those credits as part of your contributions to reducing emissions.

Here's the first big problem with carbon trading.

The system encourages companies to buy offsets instead of decreasing their emissions.

-Those carbon offset techniques range from getting rid of old chemical refrigerants and capturing methane from dairy farm manure, to planting trees.

-We can see it in California, which has a carbon emissions reduction program called Cap & Trade.

-Cap & Trade program.

-New Cap & Trade law.

-A Cap & Trade limits on carbon.

-The state sets an emissions limit or cap each year, and companies have to either keep within the limit or buy pollution allowances.

The cap goes down each year, theoretically making it harder and more expensive to pollute.

Companies that want to pollute more can buy allowances from companies that reduce their emissions.

-Tesla, for example, has sold emission credits to Fiat Chrysler and General.. making $1.7 billion since 2012.

-They can also buy offsets in forests and carbon reduction projects to stay under the cap.

Although California's total greenhouse gas emissions dropped since the program started in 2013, emissions increased in more than half of the program's facilities in the first three years.

Between 2013 and 2019, emissions from the oil and gas industries in California went up.

Predominantly low-income neighborhoods and communities of color who live and work near these facilities now experience worse air quality than before the program started.

-They're continuing to extract and emit fossil fuels in our towns, and it's directly impacting us as indigenous peoples, people of color, low-income communities.

-The overall emissions reductions that occurred through trading are nowhere near enough for the state to reach its climate targets.

There's another problem with carbon trading.

The very concept that buying a carbon offset can reduce emissions elsewhere is fundamentally flawed.

For one, it's very, very hard, if not impossible, to measure and verify saved carbon or avoided emissions.

-There's no regulation about offsets in particular that measures their quality, whether or not they're permanent on whether or not they really are providing the emission reductions that they're often told.

-It's also very easy to cheat.

-Either by making their overall emissions cap too generous or using accounting tricks to overstate reductions.

-Around the world, carbon credits are purchased in hydropower or conservation projects that would've happened anyway.

-This is a bonus for them to be collecting millions of dollars for the carbon offset that they were going to do anyway.

-Loopholes allow organizations to make it appear that forests planted through carbon funding save a lot more carbon than they actually do, or sometimes due to natural disasters or logging.

The carbon in these offset forests goes right back into the atmosphere.

-All of these trees that we're seeing here that burned down, -these were all part of an offset program?

-Yes.

-In 2020, a 153,000 acres of forests enrolled in California's offset program burned down.

-That is making trees a less reliable ally in the fig.. -Last summer's bootleg fire was the third largest wildfire in Oregon history.

Smoke from the massive blaze turned the sky gray as far away as New York City.

-Up in Mendocino County, the so-called Hopkins Fire.

That fire has burned 275 acres, and it's only 10% contained.

-Meanwhile, the projects that do actively keep these trees standing or build new hydropower plants, often dispossess indigenous and local people of their land taking resources out of their control.

-Described as the most beautiful river in the Amazon region.

A plan to build several dams along its length would transform this wide, shallow river.

It would flood forests and islands used by the Munduruku for centuries.

-In essence, carbon trading forces those least responsible for climate change to bear the burden of its so-called solutions through trees, oceans, soil, or questionable direct air capture technology.

Offsets tend to rely more on carbon removal than just reducing emissions at the source.

The world needs to reduce carbon on every possible front, but carbon markets give policymakers a way out of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which is what we actually need right now.

-At the United Nations Climate Conference in Madrid, governments are hoping to finalize the rules for international carbon markets.

-Unfortunately, carbon markets are a leading climate change strategy around the world and a favorite with oil companies.

Carbon trading is a multi-billion dollar industry, with voluntary offset markets hitting record investments in 2021.

Carbon dioxide allowances soared 250% last year to a record high.

-Many US states participate in regional cap and trade programs.

The EU, Canada, Australia, China, and other countries have them.

Yet none have gotten us close to net-zero.

What actually needs to be done?

Companies must reduce emissions at the source immediately, not just wherever and whenever it's convenient for them.

Governments need to make sure fossil fuels stay in the ground.

Forest protection and renewable energy projects should be built on strong indigenous land rights, excluding the carbon market.

Communities need control over what gets cited in their backyards.

Our collective health and wellbeing needs to take center stage over endless economic growth and production.

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