<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/06/carbon-offsets-fail-cut-global-heating-intractable-systemic-problems-study>
"The failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution is “not due to a
few bad apples”, a review paper has found, but down to deep-seated systemic
problems that incremental change will not solve.
Research over two decades has found “intractable” problems that have made
carbon credits in most big programmes poor quality, according to the study.
While the industry and diplomats have made efforts to improve the system, it
found much-awaited rules agreed at a UN climate summit last year “did not
substantially address the quality problem”.
“We must stop expecting carbon offsetting to work at scale,” said Stephen
Lezak, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Smith School and co-author of
the study, in
Annual Reviews. “We have assessed 25 years of evidence and
almost everything up until this point has failed.”
Carbon offsets are a tool to cut emissions efficiently by crediting rich
polluters for financing cheap climate action abroad while pumping out the same
amount of planet-heating gas at home.
In theory, the practice could lead to lower levels of global heating by
funnelling money to the places where it will do the most good as soon as
possible. But voluntary carbon markets have long been plagued by “junk offsets”
that overstate their impact.
The researchers said the worst problems were with issuing additional credits
for “non-additional” projects, such as building a windfarm that would have gone
up anyway; impermanent projects, such as planting trees that later burn down in
a wildfire; projects with leakage, such as protecting part of a forest but
effectively pushing loggers elsewhere; and double-counted projects, such as
restoring a peatland but letting the seller and buyer claim the drop in
emissions.
“An offset may be robust on three of these four dimensions, but if it lacks in
the fourth, it may represent a far lower emissions reduction than was credited
– or no real reduction at all,” the study warned.
A meta-analysis published in
Nature Communications last year found that less
than 16% of the carbon credits investigated showed real reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
