… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: Climate Crisis

  • Harvard set up worthless carbon offsetting scheme that sold millions of junk credits

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    Original article by Fin Johnston republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

    Project has sold credits to EasyJet, British American Tobacco and Ernst & Young

    A carbon offsetting project set up by Harvard University’s endowment fund has sold millions of junk credits to major international companies, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) can reveal.

    After establishing the scheme in 2012 on land it has bought in Uruguay, Harvard ended its involvement when it sold the land across two deals in 2017 and 2019 worth a combined $450m. But the project is still active today and has sold enough credits to have supposedly offset over 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions – roughly equivalent to what a million cars would produce in a year.

    EasyJet, British American Tobacco and Ernst & Young are all among the biggest buyers of credits from the project.

    The current owner of the project told TBIJ it had received no revenues from sales of carbon credits to these companies. A spokesperson for the Harvard fund said it does not comment on individual investments.

    The project was given the green light to sell carbon credits in 2012 by Verra, the carbon credit standards body. But in 2022 it was given a rating of zero by an agency that assesses the effectiveness of carbon offsetting schemes.

    More from this investigation Tobacco giant’s ‘carbon neutral vape’ was offset with junk credits

    The rating means that the credits, which should each represent one tonne of emissions avoided or removed from the atmosphere, represent no change. In other words, the project has had no effect on the environment at all.

    The Guanaré Forest Plantations Project, a vast reforesting scheme, was set up following the 2006 purchase of an area of land in eastern Uruguay about the size of Washington DC. It was ultimately paid for by the university’s endowment fund, Harvard Management Company (HMC), a $50bn vehicle which invests to support research and student bursaries.

    Though the land was bought through two companies set up by HMC, and the running of the project was outsourced to a Uruguayan forestry company, all the money made from sales of carbon credits went to the Harvard fund.

    [section omitted: What is carbon offsetting?]

    Carbon offsets allow companies to make up for the carbon emissions they create by paying to avoid or remove emissions elsewhere. Each carbon credit represents a ton of carbon dioxide either removed from the atmosphere or prevented from entering it in the first place.

    Offsetting has been the subject of much debate. Some argue it is necessary and provides much-needed incentives for investors to channel their money into green initiatives. Others have said it offers polluting companies a way to avoid reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions.

    The $2bn global market for carbon offsets has been hit by a number of recent scandals – with reports claiming that many credits do not represent genuine carbon reductions.

    On day one of this year’s Cop climate talks in Baku, an early agreement was reached over rules around the creation of a global carbon market, in theory paving the way for rich countries to pay for cheap climate action abroad.

    Among the project’s customers was British American Tobacco, which purchased 130,000 credits to offset emissions from its flagship product Vuse, marketed by the company as “the world’s first carbon neutral vape brand”.

    The coffee company Lavazza also bought credits from the project to offset the emissions of a supposedly “carbon neutral” coffee capsule it launched in 2022.

    Renoster, the agency that gave the project a zero rating, raised three criticisms of the scheme. The first hinged on a factor known as “additionality”, which exists to prevent companies from going about their normal business – for example running a commercial timber project – and selling carbon credits on top. If a project could run without carbon finance, then it cannot be considered additional.

    Documents submitted to Verra state that the project’s objective is to create “high value” timber products. Renoster ruled that carbon finance had ultimately made no difference. “We believe that these trees were going to be planted regardless of the project,” it said.

    The second criticism was that the scheme’s “baseline assumptions” were wrong. A baseline number is something given to every carbon offsetting project, against which its removals are measured. The project had a baseline of 0, meaning no emissions whatsoever would have been removed from the atmosphere if the scheme did not exist.

    Renoster said that baseline was “not a reasonable assumption for the region” because large portions of nearby land were already being converted from pasture to eucalyptus plantations.

    Renoster’s third criticism was that the project was unlikely to run its full course, which was projected to be 100 years.

    “We do not believe that Guanaré’s carbon credits represent true emissions reductions,” Renoster’s chief science officer, Elias Ayrey, told TBIJ. “We would not consider carbon neutrality claims based on these particular credits to be legitimate.”

    The current owners of the project said: “Carbon credits have been critical for achieving the rates of return that investors required when the project started.” They said this cash means they can let the trees grow for longer before they are harvested.

    A second agency, BeZero Carbon, also assessed the project and raised similar concerns around additionality and baseline assumptions. It found that the project had a “low” likelihood of achieving the purported emissions avoidance or removal.

    The project has also been criticised by World Rainforest Movement, an organisation that monitors the Uruguayan forestry industry, which said: “Industrial tree plantations in Uruguay have led to land concentration by a small group of corporations and investment funds. They replace an extremely important ecosystem – grasslands – to plant tree monocultures, destroying biodiversity and watersheds.”

    A BAT spokesperson told TBIJ that its carbon neutrality claim was independently validated in 2021. Lavazza said it had removed the claims from its products and is dedicated to transparency in all its sustainability initiatives.

    An EasyJet spokesperson told TBIJ that it transitioned away from offsetting in 2022 but until then “had robust due diligence processes in place”.

    Ernst & Young said it selects offsetting projects which have been certified against internationally recognised standards and continues to work on its due diligence procedures. It said it retired all remaining credits in this project in 2023.

    This story was updated on 20 November 2024 to clarify the response given to TBIJ by the Harvard fund.

    Reporter: Fin Johnston
    Global health editor: Fiona Walker
    Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles
    Editor: Franz Wild
    Impact producer: Paul Eccles
    Production editor: Alex Hess
    Fact checker: Somesh Jha

    TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.

    Original article by Fin Johnston republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

  • The Climate Finance Plan Leaders Won’t Consider at COP29? Tax the Rich

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    Original article by Sam Pizzigati republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

    Activists gather with banners, including one that reads: “Pay Up,” outside the plenary halls to voice their demands for a variety of climate-related issues, including labour rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, loss and damage financing, and the expulsion of fossil fuel lobbyists from the conference on day six at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference on November 16, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

    A global 2% annual tax on billionaire wealth could raise $250 billion per year from just the world’s 100 richest families.

    The world desperately needs to pull the plug on fossil fuels. So agree most of the official delegates from nearly 200 nations who have gathered this month by the Caspian Sea for the 29th annual global “Conference of the Parties” on climate change—COP29 for short—in Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku.

    But not all the estimated 70,000 attendees at this year’s COP are practicing what they should be preaching. Private jet arrivals at Baku’s international airport, news reports note, have just doubled.

    What makes that such a big deal? Practically nothing symbolizes wanton disregard for our Earth’s environment more dramatically than private jet travel. A corporate executive taking a single long-haul private jet flight, points out the Travel Smart Campaign’s Denise Auclair, “will burn more CO2 than several normal people do in an entire year.”

    Instead of taxing the world’s wealthiest at higher levels, rich nations want to give their richest more opportunities to become ever richer.

    Researchers at Oxfam have just gone through the flight records of 23 global billionaires. Those airborne souls averaged 184 private jet flights each over a recent single year. They each essentially circumnavigated the globe 10 times over. Their flights averaged 2,074 tons of carbon emissions, an outlay an average person globally would take 300 years to emit.

    Extravagances like private jets help explain why global carbon emissions last year expanded by 1.3%. To get climate anywhere near under control, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres noted on the eve of this month’s COP29 extravaganza, the world’s nations ought to be reducing carbon emissions by at least 9% a year.

    “The world is still underestimating climate risks,” Guterres added. “It’s absolutely essential to reduce emissions drastically now.”

    And that reducing will only unfold, the U.N. secretary-general emphasized in his COP29 opening remarks, if the world’s nations address the pivotal contribution to climate catastrophe that our world’s wealthiest are making.

    “The rich cause the problem,” as Guterres explained, “the poor pay the highest price.”

    Observers have tagged this year’s global environmental gathering the “climate finance COP.” The key question before all the official government delegates gathered in Baku: Who will actually pay the bill for addressing the climate change crisis?

    Back in 2009, national delegations to that year’s COP gathering pledged to raise an overall annual $100 billion over the next 15 years. The world’s nations have since then met that target only once. Any new annual target for the next 15 years, most researchers and activists agree, needs to run considerably higher, anywhere from $500 billion to $5 trillion higher.

    No one can reasonably expect governments alone, COP principals from rich nations counter, to come up with anywhere near that level of support. These rich-nation COP delegations want to encourage private investors to get more involved in financing new climate initiatives.

    In other words, instead of taxing the world’s wealthiest at higher levels, rich nations want to give their richest more opportunities to become ever richer.

    Nations rich with fossil fuels most heartily agree. The “onus” for financing moves to counter the climate crisis, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev from Azerbaijan is arguing, “cannot fall entirely on government purses.”

    Our globe’s richest nations would also like to expand the trading of “carbon credits,” transactions that let wealthy developed nations delay making costly emissions cuts at home by underwriting much less costly climate actions in poor nations.

    But the offset projects that developed nations underwrite, The Guardiannotes, have regularly overpromised and underdelivered, leaving “wildfires burning through forests that were supposed to be protected and emissions from renewable energy projects being counted on balance books even though they would probably have been built anyway.”

    This year’s CO29 conference will wrap up on November 22, and no serious climate change analyst is predicting any consensus that could significantly slow our globe’s ever more perilous progress to climate collapse. Developed nations, Bloomberg’s Mark Gongloff observes, remain “loath to pitch in more than $100 billion a year.”

    “Transitioning the world to clean energy alone,” counters Gongloff, could actually cost $215 trillion by 2050.

    How could the world make real progress toward those trillions? Guardian environmental editor Fiona Harvey earlier this week ran down some promising options.

    Nations could for starters, Harvey notes, put a serious tax bite on the “unprecedented” profit bonanza that fossil fuel companies have enjoyed ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Those companies have pocketed well over a quarter-trillion dollars in profits in the two years since.

    Nations could also place new taxes on the jet flights our richest so enjoy or move to end the more than $650 billion spent annually in the developing world on subsidies for fossil fuels and polluting industries. Better yet, in a world where our five richest billionaires have more than doubled their wealth since 2020, we could adopt the 2% annual tax on billionaire wealth that Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed.

    A global tax along that line could raise $250 billion per year from just the world’s 100 richest families.

    The only sure thing about initiatives like these: No proposals that could make a real climate difference will get any serious attention at COP29, as the prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, observed in his brief and biting remarks to conference-goers. Rama opened his address to COP29 by noting that he had decided to ditch his prepared remarks after spending some time in the conference’s leaders lounge.

    The global notables in that lounge, Rama continued, had all gathered to “eat, drink, meet, and take photos together, while images of voiceless speeches from leaders play on and on and on in the background.”

    “To me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world every day,” he went on to explain. “Life goes on with its old habits, and our speeches, filled with good words about fighting climate change, change nothing.”

    Concluded Rama, a former artist and the current chair of his nation’s Socialist Party: “What on Earth are we doing in this gathering, over and over and over, if there is no common political will on the horizon to go beyond words and unite for meaningful action?”

    That inaction—in the face of overwhelming global public support for greater pro-climate action—continues to comfort our world’s most fantastically wealthy.

    Original article by Sam Pizzigati republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

  • Taxing Big Oil would grow UN climate loss & damage fund twentyfold, analysis finds

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    A small tax on just seven of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies could grow the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage by more than 2000% and help address the costs of extreme weather events, according to new analysis published today by Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty. The organisations are calling for a long term global tax on fossil fuel extraction, with year-on-year increases, combined with taxes on excess profits and other levies.

    A ‘Climate Damages Tax’ would put a cost on every tonne of carbon emitted by the coal, oil and gas extracted – starting at $5 per tonne and rising each year thereafter. If it was imposed on ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor and ENI it could raise $15 billion in the first year alone to help the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries pay for the escalating cost of damage caused by climate change. Currently, just $702 million has been pledged to the loss and damage fund, while the combined profits of those fossil fuel companies exceeds $148 billion.

    Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London.
    Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)

    Earlier this month, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, French President Emmanuel Macron and Kenyan President William Ruto stated their support for a Climate Damages Tax.

    The briefing also highlights the financial costs of some of this year’s worst weather events that have been attributed to climate change, totalling over $64bn. These include Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Helene, the heatwave in India in May, Typhoon Carina/Gaemi, the floods in Brazil in May, and the floods in Kenya and Tanzania in April. The costs of damage from the disasters surveyed range from US$2.9bn (Typhoon Carina) to US$ 25bn (heatwaves in India), and present just a fraction of the total cost of loss and damage globally over the last year. 

    A Climate Damages Tax imposed only on wealthy OECD countries could play an essential role in helping the poorest and most vulnerable to rebuild after climate-related disasters. Increasing annually by US$5 per tonne of CO2-equivalent based on the volumes of oil and gas extracted, the tax could raise an estimated US$900 billion by 2030 to support governments and communities around the world as they face growing climate impacts.

    “While oil and gas giants keep raking in grotesque levels of profit from exploiting resources, the damages resulting from the industry’s operations are disproportionately borne by people who did not cause the crisis,” said David Hillman, Director of Stamp Out Poverty. “A climate damages tax – along with other levies on fossil fuels and high-emitting sectors – will make polluters pay for the cost of climate impacts, as well as supporting workers and affected communities in the transition to clean energy, jobs, and transport.”

    “Who should pay? This is fundamentally an issue of climate justice and it is time to shift the financial burden for the climate crisis from its victims to the polluters behind it,” said Abdoulaye Diallo, Co-Head of Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign. “Our analysis lays bare the scale of the challenge posed by climate loss and damage and the urgent need for innovative solutions to raise the funds to meet it. We reject Big Oil’s assault on people and democracy and call on governments worldwide to adopt the Climate Damages Tax and other mechanisms to extract revenue from the oil and gas industry.” 

    The Loss and Damage Fund was announced at COP27 in Egypt to help developing countries pay for impacts of natural disasters caused by climate change. Recently renamed the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), it currently has US$702 million in pledged funds. According to Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty’s calculations, a Climate Damages Tax levied on seven major international oil and gas companies would add in the first year alone US$15.02 billion, corresponding to over 21 times what is currently pledged to the fund. 

    “Paying the price: The economic impacts of seven extreme weather events in 2024 make the case for why climate polluters should pay”.

    Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
    Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

  • Keir Starmer says the UK can decarbonise without disruption – that’s neither true nor helpful

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    A young girl removes snow from a solar panel at a power plant in Balcombe, southern England. Oliver Rudkin, CC BY

    Sam Hampton, University of Oxford and Lorraine Whitmarsh, University of Bath

    Keir Starmer’s pledge to cut the UK’s emissions by 81% by 2035 is undoubtedly ambitious. However, his assertion at the Cop29 climate conference that it can be achieved without “telling people how to live their lives” is probably not true – at least, not according to what scientists who study this problem have found.

    We are two such researchers. Our work concerns the lifestyle and behaviour changes needed to mitigate climate change and we argue that Starmer’s claim is not only unrealistic, it’s also potentially harmful to the prospects of effective climate action.

    Many politicians, including Starmer, subscribe to the belief that technological advancements alone – more efficient wind turbines or electric vehicle batteries – will solve the climate crisis. This kind of “techno-optimism” is rife in government policy statements and strategies, but it is misplaced.

    The latest scientific assessments, and our own research, show that systemic changes to society and the global economy are necessary to keep global warming at safe levels. While some progress has been made in shifting the supply of energy from fossil fuels to renewables (in the UK, renewables now account for 40% of electricity generation, though only 25% of total energy), far less attention has been paid to tackling demand – how we use energy and resources – which directly relates to people’s lifestyles and values.

    Radically different lifestyles

    Telling people “how to live their lives”, or more accurately, encouraging and enabling significant lifestyle changes, is essential for meeting climate targets. Most measures for reaching carbon targets in the UK will require changes to public behaviour. It’s the government’s job to make it easier, cheaper and advantageous for people to make those changes.

    The necessary scale of this change is startling. To stay within the emissions budget consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the average UK carbon footprint must shrink from the equivalent of 8.5 to 2.5 tonnes of CO₂ by 2030.

    This cannot be achieved through incremental change. It requires radically different lifestyles which involve flying less, eating more plant-based foods, wasting less and replacing boilers and combustion engines with heat pumps and electric vehicles.

    Not everyone needs to change their lifestyle to the same extent. Those with the largest carbon footprints – typically the wealthiest people – need to make the most significant changes. As well as having a moral responsibility to act, wealthy people also have a greater capability to change and have more potential to influence wider change as organisational leaders and investors.

    A line graph.
    Emissions inequality exists within and between countries. International Energy Agency/Samuel Hampton

    Change for the better

    Not all climate action is sacrifice. Pro-environmental behaviour and lifestyle change can improve your wellbeing.

    There is overwhelming evidence that climate action has health benefits, whether it is eating more plant-based food and less meat, or enjoying cleaner air as you walk or cycle instead of driving.

    People with greener lifestyles also tend to be happier. Our international analysis found people who took more environmental action reported higher wellbeing. It can also help manage anxiety about the climate. In this sense going green is more likely to improve your quality of life rather than diminish it.

    Importantly, research from numerous countries shows that there is public appetite for radical change. This includes not just a desire for governments and businesses to do more to address climate change, but also a willingness to make personal sacrifices. In a survey of 130,000 people randomly selected across across 125 countries, 69% said they would be willing to contribute 1% of their personal income to climate action.

    Achieving the necessary changes to our lives and wider society will require more than public information campaigns (“telling people how to live their lives”, as Starmer calls it). These are what we call downstream approaches: they urge people to make different decisions but have been shown to have little effect in changing behaviour in the long term.

    Instead, we need upstream approaches which change the array of options available to everyone. This could involve using regulations, taxes and subsidies to make low-carbon lifestyles easier, cheaper and more attractive to adopt. Most of these measures already enjoy public support.

    While Starmer’s emissions target is commendable, his reluctance to discuss lifestyle changes is at odds with the scientific consensus. Tackling climate change effectively requires a shift to a more equal society, where happiness is prioritised over consumption. It necessitates radical behavioural changes, particularly from the wealthiest, and policies that enable these changes.

    Imagine weekly climate newsletter

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    Sam Hampton, Researcher, Environmental Geography, University of Oxford and Lorraine Whitmarsh, Professor of Environmental Psychology, University of Bath

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

  • Thousands March in London to Demand End of Fossil Fuels and Gaza Genocide

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    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

    Activists march in London to demand an end to fossil fuels and militarism on November 16, 2024. (Photo: Denise Baker)

    “We won’t stop until political leaders divest from war and destruction—and invest in a just, ecological, and equitable transition,” said one campaigner.

    Thousands of climate justice advocates took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand the U.K. government “end its reliance on fossil fuels, commit to paying climate reparations, and end its complicity in the genocide in Gaza.”

    Organizers said more than 60 groups—including Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Amnesty International U.K., Palestine Solidarity Campaign, War on Want, and Just Stop Oil—took part in the March for Global Climate Justice. The demonstration took place amid yet another shambolic United Nations Climate Change Conference and as Israeli forces continue a war on Gaza that U.N. experts this week called “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”

    More than two dozen associated protests were held in cities and towns across Britain and Ireland, including Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Sheffield. Over 150 actions around the world are planned for what organizers are calling a Global Day of Action for Climate Justice on Saturday.

    “Thousands of us united today in a historic mobilization on the streets of London, across Great Britain, and worldwide to demand an end to the era of fossil fuels and an end to the genocide in Gaza,” Climate Justice Coalition national coordinator Angus O’Brien said in a statement.

    https://twitter.com/fossilfreeLDN/status/1857774665474736462?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1857774665474736462%7Ctwgr%5E4d03f57a357f87729e30fde5d9d227467ec3eeb3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Flondon-march-climate

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    “The issues we face are global, and so is our response,” O’Brien added. “We won’t stop until political leaders divest from war and destruction—and invest in a just, ecological, and equitable transition.”

    Lauren MacDonald, the lead campaigner at Stop Rosebank, said: “Every day we are witnessing the worsening effects of climate change as they creep closer and closer to home. All this while governments insist on pandering to the demands of mega-polluters in an endless cycle of ignorance that endangers us all.”

    “Oil money has been linked to violence throughout history—and this is no different now,” MacDonald continued. “Even the Rosebank oil field here in the U.K. will see £253 million in revenue flow towards a company that has been flagged by the U.N. for human rights violations in Palestine.”

    Earlier this week, green groups including Oil Change International, Friends of the Earth Palestine/PENGON, and Tipping Point U.K. highlighted how fossil fuel companies including Britain’s BP “enable and profit from Israel’s genocide in Gaza” and perpetuate “a long history of the industry’s complicity in mass atrocities worldwide.”

    https://twitter.com/WarOnWant/status/1857804023807529075?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1857804023807529075%7Ctwgr%5E4d03f57a357f87729e30fde5d9d227467ec3eeb3%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Flondon-march-climate

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    Joanna Warrington, a campaigner at Fossil Free London—a group known for its bold direct action protests—said Saturday that “in gleaming London offices, fossil fuel giants like BP line their pockets while our planet burns and millions suffer.”

    “Every day, they stop at nothing to maximize their profits, fueling genocide, corrupting politics, and pushing our climate closer to collapse,” she continued. “We are marching today to demand that the U.K. government breaks free from the grip of mega polluters, stands up to their relentless greed, and stops enabling the violence and destruction they profit from.”

    “Another world is not just possible—it’s essential,” Warrington added, “and it starts with holding fossil fuel corporations accountable.”

    MacDonald asserted that “if we want to maintain a liveable climate, and sever the toxic links between fossil fuels and atrocities across the globe, we must do everything we can to make a rapid and fair transition away from oil and gas.”

    Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).