Exposing the Carbon Credit and Offset SCAM

Carbon credits are a way to reduce our carbon emissions and our carbon footprint to ensure a sustainable planet for future generations. Just like with most ideas, carbon credits started off with honest intentions but loopholes have turned it into a bookkeeping trick. Credits can be a greenwashing tactic that allow companies to mislead customers without making any improvements to their business model.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
1:06 Cap and trade market
1:49 Voluntary market
2:37 Kyoto Protocol
5:05 Paris Agreement
5:48 Examples
9:09 Carbon Credit Cost
10:09 Conclusion

There are 2 broad types of carbon markets. The first is a mandatory ‘cap and trade’ program. Governments set a limit or cap on the emissions permitted across a certain industry. If a company goes over their allowance, they can buy more carbon credits from their market to continue emitting gases. The second type of carbon market is the voluntary offset program. This allows businesses, nonprofits, and individuals to offset their emissions by choice.

The carbon credit market was created as part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This legally binding international agreement required only developed nations to cut CO2 emissions. It aimed to decrease overall emissions by 5% from 1990 levels. However, UN officials have since confirmed that Russian and Ukrainian oil and gas companies exploited loopholes and actually increased carbon emissions by 600 million tonnes.

The Paris Agreement of 2015 declared a new set of targets and asked all nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not just developed nations. Its goal is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. The Paris agreement is voluntary and non-legally binding.

Jim Hourdequin, CEO of Lyme Timber recently exposed the fraudulent carbon credit system in this Bloomberg article by Ben Elgin. They earned $53 million from these environmental transactions over the past two years. Lyme Timber also received $20 million for protecting 47,000 acres of hardwood forest in West Virginia. However, the land was so rugged and steep that the trees couldn’t have been harvested anyway.

Here’s another example of dodgy carbon credits. An oil company, Royal Dutch Shell, delivered a carbon neutral tanker of LNG or liquified natural gas to Taiwan by investing in ten year old forest projects in Ghana, Indonesia and Peru. In 2020, a French oil company, Total, also delivered its first shipment of carbon neutral LNG. How can you extract natural gas in Australia, ship it to China and claim it’s carbon neutral? By buying a 10 year old wind farm in northern China called Hebei.

In addition to these greenwashing loopholes, the actual cost of each carbon credit can vary drastically from less than $1 per ton to over $50 per ton. The cost depends on the effectiveness of the carbon offset project, the location and additional benefits. For example, Bill Gates spends $600 per ton to negate emissions from his private jet. Microsoft pays an average of $20 per ton. On the lower end, Delta Air lines pays about $2.30 per ton. They spent $30 million on 13 million offsets, so they were able to declare themselves carbon neutral last year.

Tackling carbon emissions and climate change is very tricky. Carbon credits are a way to quantify emissions and pollutants so they are a step in the right direction. But it is very important to identify the loopholes, flaws or scams in the system and address them instead of ignoring them due to the fear of being labeled a climate change denier.
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#carboncredit #climatechange #scam #greenenergy #environment #carbon

[answerman]

I need to sell carbon credits for the trees in my yard. It sounds like a nice side hustle. I can put the money I earn from selling carbon credits towards buying gasoline for my car.

[r.]

Currently in New Zealand, a huge problem is farmland and native trees being displaced by carbon credit farmers. Huge tracts of farmland are bought up and planted with non-native pine trees, paid for by corporations offsetting their carbon emissions. The trees cannot be felled for wood, they acidify the soil so food cannot be grown there in the future, the faster growing trees die faster, thus releasing their carbon back into the environment. The biggest concern is that it is traditionally food-growing land that is being used for this purpose. New Zealanders are rightly concerned about this dangerous monoculture that in no way contributes to the reforestation of the problematically deforested country, with native trees, as well as takes vast tracts of formally grazing and food-growing land and ruins it.

[frederickclause]

I remember when carbon credits were first proposed years ago. One of the main objections was that they would just be a wealth transfer and actually accomplish very little.

[michaelsallee]

Years ago, when carbon credits were proposed. Farm Bureau initially was in favor ... it would be a source of income to the agriculture sector. Then it was determined that to receive, third-party verification was required. The major problem ... to gain the credit so could be sold; 90 - 95% of the potential income would need to be spent before you could sell. With this revelation, Farm Bureau was now against it.

[chiradeepg]

I work for an Investment bank and was today itself discussing internally with other analysts the ways in which companies may be rigging the system, of course theoretical ways.
Got intrigued and came to YouTube to understand further, whether something similar is happening or not. And here is an amazing video, presenting the issue in lot more detail..

[bradleypreshanpillay]

Love the Phrase "green washing tactics" it boggles my mind at which companies/corporates & organizations actually benefit from this system. I have dealt with an organization that is setup to Monitor, evaluate & rate Green Buildings. as an Eco Sustainable Designer i joined for a year & left after I realize just how far out of reach this organizations expectations, lack of knowledge & hollow promises to motion for tax rebates on sufficiently rated Buildings & projects were. Thumbs up for an insightful video, your bravery to share is most admirable!

[falsificationism]

Pitch perfect--this is on the list of things I wish EVERYONE was aware of. Right up there with the flawed assumption that electric cars are going to save us.

[kxmap]

Interesting topic. Learned about this during geology undergrad. As soon as you can 'sell' carbon credits to other states or businesses, the system, is doomed...

[tomhawthorn]

I wonder if this is the same thing that my local power company does when they try to upsell "green energy". I wonder if they are just buying carbon credits that are meaningless for the environment. Thanks for this video!

[RiverMersey]

Maybe you should specifically look at the UK "Drax" wood chip powered power station! We buy ship loads of wood chip from North America, put the chip on purpose made trains that are only loaded in one direction - empty when returning to the port! BOTH UK and USA are claiming carbon credits - double counting the same fuel.
How can it be efficient to harvest USA timber and burn it thousands of miles away?!

[MrKen]

Will be curious how long this video stays up. Well done and appreciate the conversation. We fail to consider the elephant in the room - energy use. We are so focused on carbon that we ignore the reduction of energy. Finally, it’s one thing to use carbon on the ground, but dumping tons carbon at 38, 000 feet is a place where it’s not naturally occurring. Buying carbon credits allows you to sin and feel good about it rather than reducing energy consumption. If you reduce the speed limit, you lower consumption and emissions, if you manage traffic flow better, you use less energy and reduce emissions. If you travel less, the same happens. Just an opinion as the system hides waste. Thank you so much.

[kevinpeterman]

Another great video.

There was a similar thing happening with water in Santa Barbara County. In the 1980s and 90s there was a shortage of water there. At the time, all water came from either a local lake or wells. If you could prove that a housing development or apartment complex used less water than the farm currently on the land you could build on it.

Housing was water limited. That is, you couldn't build a house or apartment unless you could find water to use for the people living in the structure. You could dig a well on your land, prove it could support the family dwelling then build the home and provide water using your own personal well.

So, miraculously, every farm started to use so much water that it was true. Houses and apartments would actually reduce water usage. But, what they were really doing was just pumping water directly into drains instead of farming with it. Today there are few if any farms in the area.

[kittyrcute]

Fascinating! I am glad to have seen this video. Thank you very much. Carbon credits are something I am learning about recently. I have seen videos on Tiktok of companies offering individuals carbon credits for 15 dollars and they say, “If you want to stop corporations from producing so many carbon emissions, we make it possible to buy your own credits so that they have less to buy! Corporations have to spend thousands for carbon credits, but you can get one for 15 dollars and make them angry!” I felt that was very suspicious. I thought, are they even selling real credits? How did they get the credits? Where does the 15 dollar price come from? Have corporations figured out a loophole around this? Hearing the price you said corporations pay as well as the information about the corruption was eye opening. That is definitely a scam!

[natejennings]

Miss Carr, if more people in these industries were as informed and honest as yourself we wouldn't have alotta the problems we currently have.

[adriandrozdowski]

A good eye-opener. Thanks again for a professionally done research and video. Here is a suggestion for another related subject research and video:
In Canada, we have so called carbon tax. The idea is to tax purchases of carbon-emitting products like gasoline, natural gas etc, and then refund the collected money to each taxpayer with their annual income tax. All money collected is supposed to come back to the taxpayers. This is supposed to induce the shift in consumer spending, for example people who improve house insulation would use less fuel, therefore their tax return would be higher than the carbon tax they paid. Conversely, someone driving a Hummer would pay more tax, and see less return than their tax share. For an average person, who is not changing their habits, it is supposed to be financially neutral.

[rickhaass]

Must be a good video if Google has already tagged you with a "context" flag... Keep it up!

[joemurphy]

I'm always skeptical of companies green standing. Net zero virtue signaling should be labeled as false advertising. I trust net zero claims about as much as I trust the CCP.

[LenTexDIY]

I've been calling Carbon Credits the modern-day equivalent of medieval "The Sale of Indulgences" by the catholic church for years now. It's BS.

[choryferguson]

I've been pointing this out for more than a decade. Thanks for stating it all so succinctly!

[Oscar-zipp]

This is such a great video. I am currently writing an economic paper on greenwashing and this really connects with what I am writing about. Really indepth!