It's Okay Pookie, Daddy's Got Carbon Credits

the hole in the ozone might be healing but your lungs and the ocean aren't

Let me introduce to the wonderful world of ‘Voluntary Carbon Market’ where the biggest polluters with all the money in the world are able to buy carbon credits and miraculously make the carbon in our atmosphere go away.

The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is a place where individuals, private investors and large organizations are able to fund projects that help prevent greenhouse gases from being emitted. By doing so, the emissions that were prevent can be turned into carbon credits, that can then be bought by anyone to offset the pollution they or anyone else is causing.

That sounds like a great thing right?

1 Carbon Credit = 1 ton of greenhouse gas emission reduction

Each credit represents one ton of greenhouse gas that was not put out into the world or was reduced.

Can greenhouse gases or carbon dioxide in general, really be removed?

Yes. But a lot of it comes down to us actually working with the natural world than engineering ways for us to fix a problem we’ve created. Planting trees, protecting wetlands, regenerating soil and learning how to be more efficient with our energy consumption are some of the best ways for us to lower greenhouse gases.

But, as with a lot of things in a Capitalist world, individuals can only do so much when mega corporations are the front-runners in the degradation of the environment.

To large corporations that are funding governments across the world, having a monopoly in pollution means absolutely nothing. The Voluntary Carbon Market is like an early morning fish market where the biggest polluters can buy carbon credits and simply wave their carbon emissions away.

The creation of carbon credits is a fascinating method.

Imagine I was a large wealthy company whose name matches with a certain rain forest and I decided one day to buy a large piece of land in said rain forest and threatened to burn it, I would cause chaos. But after holding out for a few years, I pretend to listen to the people, the activists, the environmental experts and announce, “I’m not going to burn the forest anymore uWu,” I would get applauded. I will have chosen to do this environmentally friendly thing, the right thing. Burning the forest would’ve cause 50 gazillion tonnes (exaggerated number) in carbon emissions.

The truth is, I never planned to burn the forest. But since I said I would, and people thought I did, and now that I’ve said I won’t, I get carbon credits for doing what people thought I was supposed to do anyway! YAY!

It’s crazy how having money can suddenly, somehow, make the wrong things you do disappear. It’s like watching a show that stars a ditzy white female lead who always causes major issues but gets away with murder because she can bat her eyes and say “sowwy”. Except we’re talking about pollution and the white female lead happens to be rich corporations who can get away with murdering our planet because now they have a system to ‘delete’ their carbon emissions.

There are good parts to the VCM, which is primarily that it is helping large corporations stay accountable by making sure that they stay compliant to whatever laws apply to them. But it takes away from these corporations actually having to do their own work to offset the amount of pollution they’re causing.

By buying up credits from someone else’s hard work, the accountability that people and governing bodies are hoping to implement on these larger organizations completely disappears.

Holding organizations accountable and putting pressure on them to actually offset the environmental impacts they cause should not be this hard. Individuals can only do so much in their own personal lives to help save the planet. Marginalized communities, poor people and people in third world countries suffer even more because they are the most vulnerable to climate change issues.

Taking my own country, Nepal, into account, the lack of snow in the Himalayas directly affects our water bodies, our biodiversity and our way of life more so than the lives of people in countries that are actually the major actors in pollution. Simply buying 20 carbon credits, we cannot reverse the harm that has already been done. There is no active action being taken against prevailing issues, spaces like the Voluntary Carbon Markets, only allow for corporations to act like they’re doing the right thing, while the government can sit on their mountains of money and agree with them.

With no long-term changes or policies integrated into the system worldwide, even organizations like the UN, which holds annual conferences to discuss climate change and preventative measures, hold no power to be able to come up with tangible solutions to this problem.

It’s like we’re giving corporations a pat on the back for simply funneling money into the same circles it’s always been in. And with carbon credits (slur) being so readily available, there is nothing we, as individuals, can do to push for immediate action other than sit on our asses and wait for the environment to combust while the rich are able to colonize and monopolize whatever other planet they can.

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• Photo by Marcin Jozwiak from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-smoke-coming-out-from-a-building-3641377/

• Photo by Centre for Ageing Better from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/protesting-crowd-in-city-9729884/

• https://vcmprimer.org/chapter-1-what-is-the-voluntary-carbon-market/

• https://vcmprimer.org/chapter-5-what-are-carbon-credits/

• https://39988659.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/39988659/Papers/State%20of%20Quality%20and%20Pricing%20in%20the%20VCM%202026.pdf

• https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/esg/voluntary-carbon-market/