Stop the carbon credit controversy: it's a trap and a distraction!

There’s a crush of climate pundits trashing carbon offsets and the companies buying them. Controversy wins clicks but it is counterproductive to net zero climate goals. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

It takes time and innovation to green an entire supply chain and production process, especially when just emerging from a global pandemic. Companies paying good money to support green projects are getting beaten up in the media by the very people supposedly working to solve climate change.

When any team allows minor arguments to spiral into public conflicts, it serves no one as much as its competitors. Every minor controversy within the climate ally community is being amplified by propagandists from the oil & gas industry. Can you doubt it? They’ve been distracting the public by sowing doubt about the science of climate change for 60 years. Now that the evidence is disastrously apparent, their strategy is to generate confusion around solutions.

We climate allies are trying to accomplish something that is radically new to industrial civilization; there will be bumps. Yes, let’s keep raising our standards and supporting the certification groups as they learn to make carbon credits more effective. But let’s keep focused on the urgent goal of maintaining a survivable planet. To reach that, how many forests will we need to plant to offset hundreds of years of humans dumping pollution into our atmosphere and oceans? How many emissions-reduction projects will we need to fund? How many millions of acres will we need to lock up in trusts to prevent oil & gas exploitation? Will some of these projects fail to be effective? Very likely. But facing a staggeringly massive challenge, we must do everything we can, get better at it as we go and figure out how to scale successful models. Fast. Working together.