“we paid some other company to take the fall for our pollution” has always been a dumb marketing ploy
Well the principle was sound to begin with. A company has some unavoidable impact on the environment, so instead they fund some carbon capture, which offsets the carbon emitted. Sounds OK on the surface.
However in practice there are major issues with this idea.
There's the short carbon cycle (think trees) and the long carbon cycle (think oil). Taking from the long cycle and repaying the short cycle isn't equivalent at all. The short cycle is just kicking the can down the road. Sure it captures some carbon during the lifetime of the tree, but as soon as the tree dies (which is most likely within 20-30 years) that carbon gets released as the wood is burnt or rots away. Since there is no way to repay to the long cycle at the moment, this should not have been used to offset carbon taken from the long cycle.
This only works if there is an actual increase in carbon capture. But in the end it turned out almost all of the so called carbon credits sold to companies weren't based on an increase in capture at all. For example a protected piece of land explicitly only used and only to be used for trees/nature got turned into carbon credits and those credits were sold. Since that piece of land was previously being used and will be used in the future for trees, there isn't an actual increase in carbon capture and thus the carbon isn't offset at all.
The way a piece of land was turned into carbon credits turned out to be not regulated very well at all. A lot of land was sold more than once and for way more offset than physically possible to capture with that piece of nature.
It turned pieces of nature into a financial interesting product. This attracted the WORST of the worst people in the world. Buying up huge parts of land, claiming to develop it for carbon capture (but not actually doing that) and selling carbon credits up the wazoo. These pieces of land were usually just left to waste away and/or abused for various uses including very polluting uses.
As this became known, companies just looked the other way and continued to greenwash. Consumers who don't know believe the claims (made by some of the biggest companies in the world, why would you doubt this?) and think they are buying environment friendly.
I can recommend this YouTube video which is a good summation of the issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
And suddenly 99.99% of labels are gone.
I wish Canada and the US had at least some of the EU's fortitude to challenge big business and their stupidity.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
On Wednesday, members of the European parliament [MEPs] voted to outlaw the use of terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without evidence, while introducing a total ban on using carbon offsetting schemes to substantiate the claims.
It comes amid widespread concern about the environmental impact of carbon offsetting schemes, which have often been used to justify labelling products “carbon neutral”, or imply that consumers can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.
“I am particularly pleased that claims such as “climate-neutral” or “climate-positive”, which are based on CO2 offsetting, have been completely banned from the internal market.
The directive comes after months of negotiations over how environmental claims will be regulated in the EU, with a deal reached in September that was approved by law makers on Wednesday.
Environmental NGOs have raised concerns about claims based on offsets, including the 2022 World Cup in Qatar which was advertised as a “carbon neutral” event.
The European Union is taking leadership in combating greenwashing,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert on global carbon markets at CMW.
The original article contains 454 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/