I mastered out of my PhD program in biogeochemistry in August 2021, and shortly thereafter entered the business world through working in the chaotic nature-based carbon markets.
I entered the industry with an idealistic vision of carbon credits being a wonderful tool to scale ecological regeneration. I’ve unfortunately been thoroughly disabused of this notion after having worked in the field for about three and a half years.
Carbon credits are a remarkably intangible concept. They attempt to make tradable the process of invisible carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere being turned into some stable form of carbon (or avoiding the release of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere from some stable form of carbon). How, in principle, can a flow be turned into a stock? How do you know the flow actually occurred? What does it mean to sell a process as a commodity?
Their invisible nature makes their development very easy to game. One can draw the boundaries of these projects in manipulative ways, arbitrage contract lengths, and make promises about activities that don’t actually occur in order to maximize the generation of credits. Credits produced this way are not real.
I’ve seen these practices occur too many times to count. Earth system science manipulated to make money. Nominal human development goals perverted to facilitate the creation of Mammon. Supposed positive benefits for nature not actually manifesting on the ground.
What is true? What is false? What is an illusion? What is a delusion? It’s far too hard to know in the carbon credit industry, with the most likely answer being that the project in question is fake.
I don’t have a problem with the idea of carbon credits. In principle, I think that it is a good thing that companies are willing to philanthropically support projects that mitigate climate change, support a wilder world, and benefit human communities. The problem is that in practice, the vast majority of the carbon projects out there do not achieve these aims, but their credits are still sold on the market.
There are certainly good projects that achieve these noble goals, but in my experience they are few and far between. They are so rare, that it is fair for people to write off the industry as a whole. I’m there myself, and am glad that I am now in a different line of work.