Last week we reported on accusations that Verra, a business that takes money and then claims to protect South American Rain Forrest so Big Everything can claim to offset their carbon footprint, was a scam. What are the odds there would be a second carbon credit scam?
The odds would be excellent (it’s all a scam), and yes, another s0 called carbon offsetter has been linked to bad behavior.
In the race to curb catastrophic climate change, prominent Australian businesses have been enthusiastic customers of carbon credits. They’ve been offsetting their emissions by buying credits from companies promising to stop exploitative timber harvesting, whilst lifting locals out of poverty.
But reporter Stephen Long has found that there is a vast chasm between what is marketed and what is really happening on the ground.
In a month-long trip, the team travelled to some of the most isolated villages in Papua New Guinea. They uncovered environmental devastation in the very areas one company claimed to be protecting and indigenous landowners angry at unfulfilled promises.
Long asks, who will really benefit from the carbon trade?
NIHT was there to cut down the forests for logging, and they are still logging, but to get there from wherever they started, they got local villages (landowners) to sign contracts. NIHT said they would pay them a percentage of the carbon offset profits, but the language in the agreement allows NIHT to deduct almost any cost before arriving at the number, of which only a percentage goes to the tribesman.
And then, according to the reporting, they log portions of the forest anyway while paying a pittance to the locals.
A month on the ground investigating the carbon traders, where we unearth shocking claims and revelations.
So, the figures were fudged, made up?
IVY KIELE, FORESTER: Yes, he did.
STEPHEN LONG, REPORTER: There is rainforest here, but there’s also utter devastation from logging within the carbon credits project area.
POLLY HEMMING: The risk is the overall result is more emissions and a worsening of climate change.
GARY JUFFA, GOVERNOR ORO PROVINCE: It is a form of neo-colonialism. That is my opinion.
Virtue-signaling corporations, with the help of virtue-signaling politicians (most but not all Democrats), are offshoring everything. First and foremost, emissions. The entire net-zero fantasy is impossible to reach, but they are content to let nations with no interest in reducing pollution, let alone anything else, violate the blessed sacrament of the Climate Cult as long as you and I can’t see their hypocrisy.
We can see the hypocrisy they claim to offset by handing buckets of cash to groups like Verra and New Ireland Hardwood Timber (NIHT is an American company registered in Mississippi), so they can continue living the lavish western lifestyle guilt-free, at least on paper. But that’s not what’s happening.
Another organization appears to be laundering carbon credits from unsuspecting businesses while screwing over the local populations in third-world countries.
It looks like carbon colonialism on both sides, the emissions, and the credits.
So, where’s the liberal outrage?
HT | WUWT
