But I repeat myself;
A number of major carbon traders are finding that offsets they bought may now be valueless.
Trafigura Group, the world’s largest trader of carbon removal credits, has suspended a consignment as it awaits the results of an investigation into the forestry project behind the units. The situation has led the company to replace the offsets in a contract with a corporate client and instead keep the stranded credits on its own books.
Hannah Hauman, global head of carbon trading at Trafigura and a former oil trader, says the complete loss of value seen in some corners of the voluntary carbon market is unlike anything she’s witnessed in oil markets.[…]
Since the first carbon credit was traded roughly 35 years ago, the market has been hit by a steady stream of scandals that have led to wild price swings and even collapsing valuations. That has implications not just for firms trading such credits, but also for companies that use them to underpin green claims to customers and regulators.
Related:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/25/carbon-offsets-from-forest-conservation-projects-have-been-overestimated/
Carbon credits a scam? Shocking! Next thing you’ll tell me is that AGW is a hoax!!
Green indulgences not what they’re cracked up to be.
… are finding that offsets they bought may now be valueless.
They always were, silly people. Of course, the scamsters were shrewd, I’ll give them that.
How will they get into Eco Heaven now?
What they should have done is invested in magic beans. Cheaper, safer and who knows what can happen?
The first clue to anyone should have been “hmmm, some of this money is going to Al Gore, should I rethink this?”
A scam is a scam, is a scam.
No surprise that it’s a racket. Right at the beginning people were saying that buying and selling carbon dioxide credits was going to be a poorly regulated business that was ripe for fraud. In fact, it looks like it was designed to make fraud easy.
It’s all there : selling the same carbon dioxide credits to multiple organizations, intentionally over estimating the amount of carbon dioxide reductions of green projects, fraudulent bookkeeping, intentionally lax regulatory oversight …all that’s missing is evidence of kickbacks and backroom deals between the buyers, sellers, and regulators of CO2 emission credits (plus politicians, of course). They all get rich(er) while regular people are handed the bill.
Given the scale and amount of money involved,I can’t think of a bigger fraud in history or a larger transfer of wealth from regular people to the rich than the climate change business designed by corporate class environmentalists.
“I can’t think of a bigger fraud in history…”
I’ve been mulling this over as well, LC, and I can only think of one scam bigger than global warming – communism. Of course, considering the alarmists are all espousing policies that are (or might as well be) communism as their desired solution for global warming, we may be looking at two sides of the same coin here.
As the quote goes, “When you realize that Earth Day falls on Lenin’s birthday, a lot of things become much clearer.”
Communism and climate change certainly share an authoritarian ideology and a desire manipulate humans. I think the climate change movement is more insidious because as communism failed it required physical walls, soldiers with machine guns and barbed wire to maintain its power. The new surveillance state to enforce green governance is designed to be more subtlety integrated into all aspects of daily life, preventing an escape to a free country.
I would like to see an investigation of the carbon credit companies that the Cdn government gives our money to and their principals. Wouldn’t be surprised to see some of our prominent greenies making some spare change.
The fact that California and Quebec are heavily into carbon credit trading should be a warning flag
I wonder how much Gerry Butts et al have ‘invested’ in projects that sell carbon credits?
and Justin Trudeau’s trust fund (wink wink)?
That’s not accidental. The left took over the enviromental sic movement in the late 1980s, following the Brundtland report https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brundtland-Report. There’s a reason they are now called Watermelons, green ouitside, red inside.
There are also elements of feudalism. Land grabs. Aristocratic behavior and decrees. “You’ll own nothing”.
The green movement is an amalgamation of many ideologies but all of them are authoritarian and seek to have a two class society – a small ruling upper class and poor landless peasants.
“No surprise that it’s a racket. Right at the beginning people were saying that buying and selling carbon dioxide credits was going to be a poorly regulated business that was ripe for fraud. In fact, it looks like it was designed to make fraud easy.”
IIRC, the original European ‘carbon credit’ system collapsed when organized crime saw how lucrative is was.
There’s very little difference between organized crime and politics. Maybe there never was a difference. Politicians used to use some discretion to conceal their crimes, now politicians know they can get away with anything so why bother. Above the law and own the media.
“I can’t think of a bigger fraud in history…”
The 2020 U.S. presidential election?
“Carbon capture” also the next flim flam to be exposed. You heard it here first.
Perhaps also “certified” organic.
As one commenter at BCF pointed out, ‘it’s like donating to the SPCA so you can continue beating your dog’.
Al Gore made off like a bandit . oh yeah . of course enough money to build a house in the tidal zone
And never turns the lights off.
Didn’t quebekkie enter into some carbon purchase scheme with California to escape the ravages of the libranos carbon taxes? You never hear a peep of protest out of quebek over carbon taxes. Think it’s legit???
The Chicago Climate Exchange went tits up in 2010 supposedly due to inactivity in the U.S. carbon markets. I suspect it was really dollars chasing an unlimited supply of credits that led the credits to lose all value. Carbon credits were made up shit both then and now. Why would anyone build a factory outside China or India where coal is king?
Carbon credits, unfortunately, are one of the main reasons we will never know the truth about whether anthropomorphic climate change really is a valid theory. A lot of major corporations were mandated to purchase carbon credits. The contractual agreements in many cases do no have “hold-harmless agreement language.” So, should the “experts” ever conclusively say that anthropomorphic climate change is non-existent or even negligible, those mandating carbon credits would be subject to fraud on a criminal basis, and paying restitution on a civil basis.
We can never go back…or more apt…we can never go forward.
There’s an obvious solution: have Al Gore bless each certificate and include with it a piece of the True Wind Turbine. The believers will have their faith restored.
made al gore richer. and that was the entire point.
Reminds me somewhat of “Substitution” during the American Civil War where if you had the means you could pay someone to enlist in your place…as much as $3000 dollars in some areas. And as these things go more than a few crafty enlistees would desert before deployment and repeat the process over and over again making tidy sums for their families.
Pay projects gobs of money to avoid deforestation in some African backwater and you discover it was never at risk in the first place or worse…they cut the trees down and move the boundaries while virtuous elites jet around the world thinking they’re saving the planet.
Hilarious.
The planet has been warming since the last ice age cycle ended.
The population on the planet is about 8 billion. Do you think 8 billion would not have an effect on their atmosphere? They’ve impacted the water.
We need to solve the issues of any impact caused with technology. Taxing citizens to poverty isn’t solving anything.
We have the technology, do we have the will?
The WEF have the will and the tech. Happy now?
I don’t respect or fear the WEF or KS.
All the fires up-North might be related to this. Majority of carbon credit scams are claiming to plant trees. Some ‘tragic’ (of course) fires can conveniently muddle the exact counts of how many trees actually planted.
Here is a quandary. When they reforest in Canada they spray the newly planted forests with herbicide – from helicopters – using low-time pilots (that’s another quandary, letting pilots with no flying experience fly 20 feet off the ground at 100 km/hr). How can you spray a forest of seedlings with a plant killer? And not expect trouble in 50 years when the unnatural forest starts to dry out and die?
So you think the herbicides kill trees. Put a lot of thought into that, did you?
A fraud just like Global Warming. What a surprise!
How many carbon credits are bought by the federal government in order to offset Justin’s travel? How many of them are from Liberal aligned firms?
As has been said before “Carbon credits are like a fat guy paying a skinny guy to go on a diet for him.”
Anyone else smell tulips?
“Safe and effective” was just 2 lies, and its killing millions.
The number of lies in the whole carbon trading/climate change shtik is off the scale.
Way back when buying carbon credits was getting started, I watched a program that showed how willing and eager people were to buy them. And it occurred to me that I could easily set up a (fake) carbon credit website and rake in millions. I gave it serious consideration but then realized that I just could not be that dishonest.
Moving paper around on your desk reduces CO2 emissions. Ask anyone in the Climate Industrial Complex.