Episode 12: Carbon Offsets—One Quandary After Another
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Are carbon offsets a viable option for decarbonizing the global economy? What problems do they solve? What problems do they create? We hear from Suzi Kerr (Chief Economist, EDF), Brad Gentry (Frederick K. Weyerhaeuser Professor in the Practice of Forest Resources Management and Policy, Yale University), Zack Parisa (CEO, NCX), Anastasia O'Rourke (Managing Director, Yale Carbon Containment Lab), Dr. Charles Canham (Forest Ecologist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies), Kristen Lyons (Fellow, Oakland Institute), Kim Hellstrom (Strategy Lead, Sustainability, H&M Group), and Alex Barron (Assistant Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, Smith College).
Notable quotes:
On the power of the carbon credit market:
Suzi Kerr: “If you can get the countries who are richer and have more stringent targets… to fund the poorer countries who might have a lot of opportunities to mitigate, but they don't have the resources to do it… then you could as much as double mitigation for the same cost.”
On rethinking the “permanence” of forest carbon storage:
Zack Parisa: “If one ton for 100 years held out of the atmosphere is valuable to society, then how much carbon for how long, if I were to remove a larger amount for a shorter period of time, is equally valuable to society? Because what is also true is there is urgency to removing carbon from the atmosphere. The curves that I look at indicate that what happens over the next decade really matters.”
On the limits of carbon offsetting:
Alex Barron: “It doesn't take a whole lot of math to demonstrate that the approach of offsetting all your emissions is not scalable to the entire planet.”
Further reading on today’s episode:
Mobilizing Voluntary Carbon Markets to Drive Climate Action: Recommendations, EDF
“What Makes a High-Quality Carbon Offset?,” Carbon Offset Guide
“Unpacking Ton-Year Accounting,” CarbonPlan
“A Critique of NCX’s Carbon Accounting Methods,” CarbonPlan
“Forest Carbon Offsets: Too Good to be True?,” Cary Institute
“Carbon offsets: How a Vatican forest failed to reduce global warming,” The Christian Science Monitor
“Setting the Record Straight on Green Resources' Project in Uganda,” Oakland Institute
“Carbon neutrality should not be the end goal: Lessons for institutional climate action from U.S. higher education,” Alex Barron, One Earth
“Choosing the Best Carbon Offset Programs of 2022,” EcoWatch
The Net-Zero Standard, Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi)
The Oxford Principles for Net-Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting, University of Oxford
Photo by Arnaud Mesureur on Unsplash