Friends highlight green-washing ‘carbon offsets’
'More than ninety per cent of the credits offered did not represent real carbon reductions.'
Quakers have highlighted a recent study showing that the ‘carbon offsets’ approved by the world’s biggest certification provider are largely worthless. The investigation into rainforest carbon offset credits approved by Verra found that more than ninety per cent of the credits offered did not represent real carbon reductions.
Writing on the Quakers in Britain website, Olivia Hanks, climate justice lead for Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), said: ‘Climate activists and scientists have warned for years that carbon offsets are a convenient fantasy which enables the companies purchasing them to greenwash their polluting activities while making no real changes. While the Verra story is dispiriting, perhaps telling it can help wean our society off these false solutions.’
She said the revelations in January illustrate the challenges of contributing to a culture of truth, faced with deceptions and misinformation, particularly regarding the climate crisis. ‘This is a concern for Quaker work at all levels’, she writes, which led to BYM’s work ‘to try and foster a culture of truth and integrity in the UK government and parliament’.
Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) is also working to try and counter misinformation spread to diplomats by the fossil-fuel lobby.
The study found that most carbon offsets issued by Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2 billion (£1.6 billion) voluntary offsets market, are ‘phantom credits’ and may worsen global heating. The credits are used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations. A number of these internationally-renowned companies label their products ‘carbon neutral’ and claim their consumers can buy new clothes, eat certain foods or fly without making the climate crisis worse.
The nine-month investigation was undertaken by The Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organisation.
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