Not surprising. The entire idea is kind of dumb to begin with. Sure, let’s not make any meaningful reduction in our emissions and attempt to pay someone to clean up our pollution instead. If anything there should be a carbon tax that goes toward verified programs. There is no way having corporations randomly throw money at grifters will ever work out.
I mean yeah, no shit. The idea that you could buy off your carbon footprint was always ridiculous. It reminds me of letters of indulgence.
Are there legit credits? Yeah probably, but who is overseeing it? What’s stopping a polluter from faking it?
It’s been overseen by a bunch of verification bodies (eg: Verra) which don’t seem to have any real objection to the fact that they’re blessing fraudulent credits.
Right. There are so many links in this chain that could cause the entire thing to break. Corruption in the verification bodies. Fake credits. Deception about actually buying credits.
We’re talking really large sums of money too. Like if I take an aeroplane I can tack on a significant sum to “offset” my fare, and I have absolutely no guarantee that that money doesn’t just end up in the CEOs pockets.
Sure, the company could say “of course we won’t just take the money and run”, and as we all know, companies never lie.
