Every once in a while, the mainstream media commits a brave act of actual journalism, and we have to give them props. This time, it's The New Yorker, with this piece on a carbon offset firm that was a giant scam.
My latest for @NewYorker. The world's largest carbon offsetting firm sold environmentally worthless credits, while the developer of its biggest project secretly moved of tens of millions of $ paid by Gucci, Porsche, Nestlé & others into offshore accounts. https://t.co/Z1dJEDwrz4
— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) October 16, 2023
Heidi Blake is an investigative journalist with The New Yorker, and she follows up in subsequent tweets:
South Pole maintains that local people living around the Kariba forest protection in Zimbabwe are the "main beneficiaries" of the money it makes selling credits. But the company sidelined an internal whistleblower who warned that most of the funds seemed to have gone astray.
— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) October 16, 2023
'Astray' is a very polite way of putting it.
Even after the company learned that it had massively overestimated the amount of carbon emissions the project had prevented, it continued selling millions of credits to some of the world's biggest brands.
— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) October 16, 2023
Oh really?
South Pole has always presented the Kariba project as a haven for endangered animals — but its local partner personally controls trophy hunting in a large area, and works with an operator that posts pictures of hunters displaying dead lions, leopards, hippos & elephants.
— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) October 16, 2023
Yet another lie by this company. Seems to be a pattern.
A big hat-tip to @tiesgijzel at @FTM_eu, who has led the way with powerful reporting on South Pole. Here's his latest piece on the trophy hunting inside the Kariba Project. https://t.co/I7KFNfxgPg
— Heidi Blake (@HeidilBlake) October 16, 2023
Here's the crux of the problem with South Pole:
On a warm night in September, 2022, as staffers partied in the gardens, a circle of weary executives, including Heuberger, Dannecker, and Muench, stood in a courtyard. They were reckoning with bad news.
The previous year had marked a decade since Kariba was launched, which meant that South Pole was required by Verra to check its explosive predictions against reality. After months of reviewing satellite imagery, the company’s data analysts had determined that deforestation in the control zone was dramatically lower than projected. They estimated that only fifteen million of the forty-two million carbon credits generated by the project had actually been backed by avoided emissions. All the rest of those supposedly offset tons of carbon simply weren’t real.
Muench and another executive urged Heuberger to stop selling offsets from the Kariba project immediately. “If it comes out that we’ve knowingly sold credits that weren’t equivalent to a ton of CO2 emissions avoided, it would do huge damage,” Muench said. Heuberger rejected that idea. The credits had been validated by Verra, he argued: “If you want to scale, you have to rely on certain rules and systems.” (South Pole acknowledges that this conversation occurred but says that it took place after the trip to Tuscany.) Back in Zurich, South Pole continued enthusiastically promoting Kariba. In the months after learning of the miscalculation, it sold more than three million environmentally worthless credits, to Porsche, Nestlé, and Nando’s, along with others including the Cannes Film Festival and a network of Australian zoos.
It really is an interesting, if lengthy, read.
Few people were surprised at this news. We remember Solyndra and the other hypocrisies of the 'green' movement.
Wait.
— RBe (@RBPundit) October 16, 2023
People didn’t know this was a scam?? https://t.co/fk4HZ5qNWa
Apparently not.
Carbon offsets make NFTs look like precious metals.
— J (@ARaised_Eyebrow) October 16, 2023
Yes they do.
I'm shocked the climate scam is also a financial scam.
— JWF (@JammieWF) October 16, 2023
So are we. Totally shocked.
Not.
If you’re suggesting climate change mitigation efforts are giant scams designed to make people rich, well, I just don’t know what to say.
— Rhonda Rhoades (@NewWaveIngenue) October 16, 2023
We'd say you are correct, Rhonda.
Gee what a surprise.
— Will Collier (@willcollier) October 16, 2023
As surprising as the sun rising in the east.
Comical. And I'll always think of carbon credits as indulgences of the climate religion. https://t.co/gbkFMbaka3
— Walterindenver (@WalterinDenver) October 16, 2023
They are.
Indulgences aren't real??? Whaaaa?
— Fookbeden (@fookbeden) October 16, 2023
Whaaaa indeed.
You mean this was a pyramid scheme that was completely useless to help the environment? https://t.co/4kg8rbmP3M pic.twitter.com/aDhOJ1KWtV
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) October 16, 2023
Yes it was. On the backs of impoverished people, too.
Wait.
— RBe (@RBPundit) October 16, 2023
People didn’t know this was a scam?? https://t.co/fk4HZ5qNWa
Too blinded by virtue signaling.
Carbon offsetting is a scam??!! Who could have guessed??! 🙄 https://t.co/xaB7TmbLxd
— Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) October 16, 2023
Anyone paying attention to, well, anything.
Marking myself safe from having ever fallen for this grift. https://t.co/GratrFOFMy
— Ken van Wyk (KRvW) ⚜️ #IlPizzaioloFelice (@krvw) October 16, 2023
Us too. Safe, safe, safe.
So you are telling me credits were a scam? https://t.co/PUVy37ncHr pic.twitter.com/wj5itTUOrz
— Brandi Koontz (@bfkoontz) October 16, 2023
The shock continues.
The real story here is that there are people just now thinking it might have been a scam. https://t.co/KkKZ0tnNs0
— Dr. Kelly Black Raven 👉 - - - - (@mustang_flying) October 16, 2023
Only took them 30 years to do it.
HAHAHAHAHA https://t.co/k0QDXaxIgQ
— Bill W (@dumb_milennial) October 16, 2023
It is very, very funny.
Carbon offsets not looking so good. https://t.co/nqGuQY0XMm
— Jeff Weigel (@jrweigel) October 16, 2023
Not good at all.
Golden Age of Fraud continues apace. https://t.co/nPTeJ2XJqO
— Jamie Selway (@JSelway3) October 16, 2023
Yes it does. Maybe people are starting to wake up, though, when a place like The New Yorker starts writing about what a scam it is.
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