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Speaker 1

00:00

-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Our main story tonight concerns Earth. It's basically the Oscar Isaac of planets, in that it seems to be getting alarmingly hotter every year. It's pretty clear this planet is not doing great. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now higher than ever in human history.

Speaker 1

00:20

And a recent UN Commission climate report was called an Atlas of Human Suffering, which coincidentally is also the slogan for Craigslist. Luckily, though, 1 group is here to fix it, giant corporations. Many are now claiming that they've hit upon a solution becoming carbon neutral or net 0. Basically, running their businesses in such a way that they don't increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Speaker 1

00:42

As of last year, 1 in 5 of the world's 2, 000 largest publicly listed companies have now committed to a net 0 emissions target, which sounds great. You might even have seen them bragging about their claims in ads like this 1 from United Airlines, this 1 from Apple, this 1 from Shell, and this 1 from an unexpected source.

Speaker 2

01:01

KitKat is committing to becoming carbon neutral by 2025, reducing emissions by 50% through forest regeneration, planting 5000000 shade trees, supporting regenerative farming, and securing 100% renewable electricity for our factories worldwide. And we'll offset any remaining carbon by investing in climate projects. Let's give the planet a break.

Speaker 1

01:28

Yeah, even Kit Kat is getting involved, Which is a strange sales technique. It's not like you decide to eat a Kit Kat bar because of their net 0 targets. You decide to eat 1 because you're at rock bottom and you've run out of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Speaker 1

01:40

That's why you do it. Now, as for the shovel made out of a Kit Kat, that seemed less like a sustainable farming tool and more like what you'd use to bury the body of the red M&M. But the key phrasing comes at the end there, that they'd offset any remaining carbon. That's actually a common tactic.

Speaker 1

01:58

In fact, 1 study that looked closely at the net 0 promises of dozens of companies in heavily polluting industries, found that two-thirds of them are relying on offsets instead of emissions reductions. Offsets are wildly popular. Even bands have promised over the years to use them to reduce the environmental impact of their tours. All the greats have done this.

Speaker 1

02:19

Dave Matthews, Bon Jovi, Coldplay, and even Sgt. Pepper's angsty Victorian ghost club band, My Chemical Romance.

Speaker 3

02:27

A big tour like this uses lots of energy. Trucks, vans, lights, sound, and more. And that has an impact on

Speaker 4

02:33

the environment. So we've partnered up with a really cool nonprofit organization called Reverb to help us green things up.

Speaker 5

02:39

1 of the things that they do is figure out how much energy the tour uses. Then they invest in alternative energy projects to help make up for it.

Speaker 1

02:47

Cool. Thanks, guys. And I admit it is nice to see them represent their core fan base, middle schoolers who have to give a presentation in front of the class against their will, but I don't particularly care for the phrase, green things up there. It sounds like something Shrek would say right before he reaches a sexual climax.

Speaker 1

03:03

Look out! I'm about to green things up! Watch me, donkey! I want you to watch me!

Speaker 1

03:09

Look me in the eyes! -♪ ♪ -♪ And yet, if the idea that you can simply invest a little money and make your carbon footprint disappear sounds too good to be true. That's because it absolutely is. Study after study has indicated that most offsets available on the market don't reliably reduce emissions.

Speaker 1

03:29

And yet, Offsets are now the backbone of the environmental policies of many of the biggest polluters on the planet. So given that, tonight, let's talk about carbon offsets. What they are, what they claim to do, and how they may actually be making things even worse. And let's start with some basic definitions.

Speaker 1

03:45

The idea of a carbon offset is that if you emit CO2 into the atmosphere, you can offset it by, say, planting or protecting trees, which remove carbon from the air, or building a wind farm to replace a fossil fuel plant. Here is how BP, a major polluter, of course, sells the whole idea.

Speaker 6

04:01

I've been driving around and generating 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide, which, of course, I've released into the atmosphere to join all the rest of the greenhouse gases that are already up there. Now, imagine that miles away, maybe on the other side of the world, somebody else takes 3 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. So, what's happened?

Speaker 6

04:24

3 tons in, 3 tons out, resultant 0.

Speaker 1

04:29

Now, That violently British man did a pretty good job of illustrating the concept there. I'm not sure he needed to use the decorations from a clown's funeral to do it, but I guess, without them, I'd never have known what it looks like when you add 3 to something, but then take 3 away. It simply can't be done.

Speaker 1

04:44

But if that simple explanation did not do it for you. Here is 1 idiot explaining offsets to another idiot using the worst possible metaphor given who that second idiot is.

Speaker 7

04:54

Of course, you can buy carbon offsets, which is the equivalent of buying, you know, a diamond watch, ring, and necklace if you're unfaithful to your wife and say, -"Oh, it's just an offset, honey. No problem." -$$TRANSMISSION

Speaker 6

05:04

That's right.

Speaker 7

05:05

That'll work. Which a carbon offset is, oh, I can send all I want. I can put out all the emissions I want, but you gotta get rid of your caravan and drive a bicycle.

Speaker 1

05:15

Okay, set aside Hannecy's inability to decide if he thinks carbon offsets are like buying your wife a necklace or forcing someone else to ride a bike. Let's just dwell on him saying the words, if you're unfaithful to your wife, to Newt Gingrich, a man who was famously unfaithful to 2 of his 3 wives so far, trying to get 1 to sign divorce documents while she was recovering from cancer surgery, and asking the second for a divorce shortly after she was diagnosed with MS. No wonder he just sat there silently until Hannity started speaking again.

Speaker 1

05:45

I'm sure he desperately wanted to get up and walk out, but I guess Newt would never do that to Sean. He only does that to people with severe illnesses. But the point is, offsets allow businesses that can't immediately reduce their emissions to balance things out by buying emissions reductions somewhere else. And in some parts of the world, they're actually a way to meet regulatory requirements on emissions.

Speaker 1

06:07

Places like China, Korea, Australia, and California have set caps for how much companies can emit. And if you go above that cap, you might opt to buy an offset to get back below it. But companies operating outside of those areas might still choose to buy offsets voluntarily so that they can make claims like the ones that you saw earlier in those ads. The voluntary market is smaller, but it is growing incredibly fast.

Speaker 1

06:32

It's quadrupled to nearly 2000000000 dollars in 2021. Even you as an individual can now buy offsets. You might have seen check boxes like these on sites like UPS, offering you the opportunity to offset the carbon of your delivery, or maybe you were offered an offset as an impulse buy while traveling.

Speaker 8

06:50

Travelers through Austin's airport can help offset the emissions their flights put into the atmosphere. It only costs 2 dollars and offsets more than 1, 000 miles of air travel.

Speaker 1

07:02

Now, that price is obviously too low. It is pretty suspicious that you could walk into an airport and offset more than 1, 000

Speaker 6

07:06

miles of air travel. Now, that price is obviously too low. It is pretty suspicious that you could walk into

Speaker 1

07:07

an airport and offset more than 1, 000 miles of air travel for just 2 dollars, then head over to a Cheebo Express where it costs at least 5 times that to buy a soggy chicken wrap that somehow looks, if I had to pick 1 descriptor, recently divorced. -♪ ♪ -♪ There are even boutique companies now popping up, like YepYou, the world's first human breath carbon offset service, where you can, for $17 a year, offset your own breath. And if you just let out a huge, exasperated sigh at hearing that, bad news, that'll cost you extra.

Speaker 1

07:38

Yep, you also offers you the chance to offset your pets, ranging from 50 cents for a hamster to 6 dollars for a cat, all the way to $10 to offset your pig. Which again, seems great, aside from the fact that $10 to offset your pig sounds like a Dutch sex act that was sent back and forth through Google Translate 1 too many times. For $10, Bejiliash, he offsets your pig, so good, so strong. Your eyes will pop and your brave testicles will switch.

Speaker 1

08:06

So are we doing this? Bejiliash, offshed the pig. -♪ ♪ -♪ And look, on some level, you probably know carbon offsets are bullshit, Both because you're a reasonably intelligent person and because you know exactly what show you are watching right now. I don't open my beak to squawk out good news.

Speaker 1

08:24

-♪

Speaker 6

08:24

Good news

Speaker 1

08:25

♪ -♪ Good news This thing pops open for sad news and porridge, and I'm all out of porridge right now. -♪ Good news But exactly how offsets are bullshit is really interesting. Because it's easy to say that you are reducing carbon emissions, but it is much harder to prove it.

Speaker 1

08:41

And the truth is, there aren't many checks and balances in place to prevent abuse. And let's start with the fact that a key criterion for any offset project is what's called additionality. The idea is that an offset should provide an extra reduction of carbon that wouldn't have happened any other way. For instance, if you planted a tree that wouldn't otherwise have been planted.

Speaker 1

09:02

That is additional, as is saving a tree that would otherwise have been cut down. But there are many, many cases where the claim of additionality is shaky at best. Take J.P. Morgan, which announced that it had achieved carbon neutrality across its operations in 2020.

Speaker 1

09:19

1 of the ways that it claims to have eliminated its carbon footprint is by buying almost a million dollars worth of offsets, claiming to protect an area in Pennsylvania called Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. But it turns out that the threats to the sanctuary were wildly overblown."

Speaker 9

09:34

This is the project's planning document, submitted in

Speaker 1

09:36

2018

Speaker 9

09:37

to the American Carbon Registry, and this is the baseline the project's built upon—that if it weren't for intervention, the forest would be subject to aggressive clear-cutting and high grading. The problem was, Hawk Mountain Preserve, as its name would suggest, was already a preserve.

Speaker 10

09:53

Since the 1930s, this area's been closely looked after, managed, and protected.

Speaker 9

09:58

The forest didn't need saving, It wasn't under threat.

Speaker 1

10:02

Yeah, of course it wasn't. And that probably should have been obvious from the fact that it was a preserve and not called the Hawk Mountain Chop Chop Zone and Tree Murder Playground. As a reporter from Bloomberg uncovered, that offset was sold to J.P.

Speaker 1

10:15

Morgan by the Nature Conservancy, which has been very active in selling carbon offset projects. They also sold 180, 000 credits to Disney, which ostensibly went to protect this forest in rural Pennsylvania from what the Conservancy warned was a risk of significant commercial timber harvesting. But you should know, the Nature Conservancy itself had owned most of that land since 1999, and they are not famously in the commercial timber harvesting business. And you might think, well, I don't care.

Speaker 1

10:44

Good for them. They're taking Disney's money and not having to give them anything in return. But they are giving them something, though. Namely, they're giving the ability to make claims like, Disney reduced over 4000000 tons of carbon dioxide, equal to taking over 900, 000 cars off the road.

Speaker 1

11:00

Which we already know is not true. But if it were, I'd at least hope that they'd start with Mater. I don't care if he's Lightning McQueen's best friend. He's choking us.

Speaker 1

11:09

He's choking our planet to death! -♪ ♪ -♪ Also, the money from offsets doesn't always go to places like the Nature Conservancy. Remember that airport plan, where you could offset more than 1, 000 miles of air travel for just 2 dollars? Records show that this year, a significant portion of the money from that program has gone to support trees at the Hudson Farm club in New Jersey, a 3, 800-acre private hunting club set up by Peter Kellogg, billionaire and model for the L.L.

Speaker 1

11:37

Bean heart failure of the Yacht Club collection. Here is 1 member explaining what happens there.

Speaker 11

11:43

Peter had this vision of having a place for several of his friends and additional members to hunt in New Jersey and to shoot in New Jersey and to develop 1 of the best sporting clays spots in the whole Northeast, if not the country. It's called Hudson Farm. It's approximately 3, 800 acres.

Speaker 11

12:03

It's in Andover, New Jersey. It's 1 of the most beautiful places on Earth I've ever seen. And it is a hunters and shooters paradise.

Speaker 1

12:11

Okay, first, it's not just me. We're all getting strong get-out vibes from that place, right? It's not just me.

Speaker 1

12:18

And second, the Hudson Farm Club and the carbon credit company Blue Source claimed that without the money from carbon offsets, 77% of its trees could be clear-cut in just 5 years. But that clearly wasn't gonna happen. It's owned by a billionaire, and exists for rich guys to fantasize about shooting animals in the wild, right down to this life-sized carpool cutout of a buffalo on 4 wheels. In fact, I'd argue the only real damage that might happen there is from that guy you saw talking earlier who seems in real danger of casually shooting off his own nut sack.

Speaker 1

12:51

-♪ ♪ -♪ And with the market for carbon offsets increasing, there are now companies actively recruiting almost anyone who has a tree to get in on the action. Firms like these are in the business of finding small landowners and connecting them with companies who pay them not to cut down their trees. Pitching themselves with ads like this 1 from NCX.

Speaker 12

13:10

We're in a critical decade for the climate, and forests are a powerful natural solution for removing carbon from the atmosphere. NCX's forest data scientists developed the first high-resolution forest map of every acre of America. Now, every landowner and every acre of forest can be part of the climate solution.

Speaker 1

13:27

Right, basically, they will pay you to leave your trees alone, which is a pretty good deal, as it should be easy not to cut down trees. Unless, of course, we're talking about this 1, because honestly, fuck this tree! It has at least 7 different eyes, teeth, and it seems to be vomiting up a bush.

Speaker 1

13:44

You look like the Giving Tree if all it gave you was nightmares and was written by H.P. Lovecraft. I hate this tree! And with NCX, you don't even have to promise never to cut your trees down, as they give you the option to still get paid simply to defer cutting them down for as little as 1 year.

Speaker 1

14:01

But a 12-month delay doesn't really benefit the planet much. As 1 expert that we talked to framed it, it's akin to selling a carbon credit for holding your breath for 15 seconds. Also, there's a much bigger problem with all of these tree-based programs, which is that even if they do protect 1 section of trees from logging. That doesn't necessarily mean much if a logging operation simply cuts down the trees on the land next door instead.

Speaker 1

14:25

Plus, given that forest fires are now on the rise thanks to climate change, offset programs can and have literally gone up in flames. All of this is why, while companies love to make big, broad claims about the benefits of their offsets, they really don't like getting into the details. Take the airline Ryanair. A few years ago, they began a voluntary program where customers could contribute 1 euro to help offset their flight, pointing to tree planting schemes in Ireland and Portugal that would help them do that.

Speaker 1

14:54

But an expert later found those schemes offset just 0.01% of Ryanair's 2019 emissions. And when its CEO was pressed on this, he got a little defensive.

Speaker 13

15:05

The point here is that you've got a large and growing airline that emits a lot of carbon dioxide, and your offsetting scheme nowhere near meets that.

Speaker 14

15:14

Absolutely wrong. But there's an Irish forest, isn't there, in Roscommon? Yeah.

Speaker 14

15:20

Which is 7 hectares.

Speaker 13

15:21

I mean, it is nothing.

Speaker 15

15:23

From little acorns grow mighty trees?

Speaker 6

15:25

If you've

Speaker 13

15:26

only got 7 hectares, you're only going to get 7 hectares' worth of mighty oaks,

Speaker 6

15:29

aren't you? He

Speaker 15

15:30

started this in the last year. I mean, we're working with 4 projects. We're replanting trees in Montchique in Portugal.

Speaker 15

15:37

We're supporting whales and dolphins in Ireland as well. The whale tracking project,

Speaker 13

15:40

which has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

Speaker 15

15:42

And the bizarre 1...

Speaker 13

15:43

Which has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

Speaker 6

15:44

No, but

Speaker 15

15:44

it's good for the environment.

Speaker 9

15:45

It's good,

Speaker 15

15:46

yeah. I don't think any of our customers would object to supporting whales and dolphins in Ireland.

Speaker 1

15:50

Okay, it's not that people would object to that. Of course people love whales and dolphins. Whales are big honking boys who up shit water out of their heads.

Speaker 1

15:59

And dolphins are smooth, friendly water dogs who cackle like demonic babies. They're both excellent, but protecting them isn't the thing that you promised. It's like if you asked your husband to pick up your kids from school and he came home childless, but with a pizza. You're not mad at the pizza.

Speaker 1

16:13

No one's ever mad at the pizza, but it's not the important thing that he said he was gonna fucking do. The problem with carbon offsets is, everyone wants to believe in them. Buyers want a cheap way to make a big claim, and sellers want money for doing as little as possible. And ideally, there'd be an entity in the middle charged with keeping both sides honest.

Speaker 1

16:35

And there actually is. They're called carbon offset registries. And they're supposed to be neutral third parties who sign off on the efficacy of potential offsets. These 4 are the major ones in the voluntary offset market.

Speaker 1

16:48

But those registries aren't really accountable to anyone. Technically, you or I could start a registry, and given that they are paid by the company selling the offsets, it will not surprise you to learn that many experts say their standards are far too low. As exemplified by the fact, the Hawk Mountain Preserve, the Disney Forest, and the Hunting Club all met the standards of the American Carbon Registry. Basically, getting a sign-off from a carbon registry is like winning a Kids' Choice Award.

Speaker 1

17:16

It doesn't really mean much, but it will help you temporarily look a little bit greener. --LAUGHTER --And look, the problem isn't those projects themselves. It is good to protect forests. But the issue is claiming that they cancel out carbon emissions, because truly, offsetting carbon is technically possible.

Speaker 1

17:35

Theoretically, if a wind farm gets built to replace a fossil fuel plant that had 0 likelihood of getting built otherwise, that could be a genuine offset. But real world examples of that are incredibly hard to find. 1 study of wind turbine projects in India, for instance, found that at least 52 percent of approved carbon offsets were for projects that would very likely have been built anyway, which causes real damage because polluters in countries that cap emissions bought those offsets. And when you buy an offset so you can pollute more and that offset is bullshit, you're now actively making things worse.

Speaker 1

18:13

In fact, that study argues the sale of those offsets substantially increased global carbon dioxide emissions, which clearly is not very good. And there is 1 final way the carbon offsets can cause harm. Because when that BP spokesperson with the goth balloons referred to building an offsetting project miles away, maybe on the other side of the world. It is worth remembering that people might be living there.

Speaker 1

18:37

A decade ago, the Swedish Energy Agency announced that it had bought carbon credits from a company called Green Resources, which said it had planted pine forests in Uganda that could offset carbon emissions elsewhere. The problem was, thousands of rural Ugandans were evicted by the Ugandan government to make room for the plantation, including this man, whose family once farmed a large plot of land there.

Speaker 5

19:01

When I was 7 years old, I started herding cattle. The other kids and I herded the livestock on our land. There were rocks, which were remnants from my great-great-grandfather's day.

Speaker 5

19:11

Old uncle, do you have a possibility to just show us where your land was? Uh-uh. No. That would be a problem.

Speaker 5

19:19

I can get in trouble if I show you the land.

Speaker 1

19:21

That's obviously awful. No 1 should ever be scared to show someone a piece of land, unless, of course, that fucking janky tree is on it. If there were any squirrels living in you, they have since died of embarrassment, and I hope that you know that.

Speaker 1

19:36

And the Swedish Energy Agency will point out that they have now backed away from that Ugandan project, but I will point out that they only did that after that new segment that you just saw embarrassed them on Swedish television, and they were completely fine with it until then. So it seems, at best, the benefits of carbon offsets are wildly overstated, while the harm they can do is very real. And while there are ongoing efforts to at least improve the standards of registries, The truth is, offsets aren't the answer here. Fundamentally, we cannot offset our way out of climate change.

Speaker 1

20:09

Even the current CEO of United Airlines knows this. He's 1 of the few heads of a fossil fuel-dependent company who's actually willing to acknowledge how inadequate offsets can be.

Speaker 16

20:19

The real challenge we have globally is that mankind produces 4000 times as many emissions as we did in the pre-industrial era. And most of these carbon offset projects are about planting trees. There is not room on the planet to plant 4, 000 times as many trees.

Speaker 16

20:36

It simply can't be the answer. And the problem with it is, is it's the easy solution. It's the solution that if you're sitting in the C-suite, you can write a check and check the box and have a marketing message that I've offset all my car, but you really haven't done anything.

Speaker 1

20:51

He's right. That airline CEO is right. Although it does speak to the seductive power of offsets that even his company can't seem to give them up.

Speaker 1

21:00

Because if you go to the United Airlines website right now, you will find a page where you can offset your flight in front of a picture of a fucking forest. So at least 1 of those people sitting in the C-suite, happily checking a box, is the ghost of Mark Zuckerberg future. -♪ ♪ -♪ But it is true that there literally isn't enough space for every company to plant trees and fulfill their own net 0 pledge. By 1 estimate, there's only about 500 million hectares of land left that can be dedicated to new forest for carbon capture.

Speaker 1

21:31

And Shell alone has proposed planting a tenth of that amount. The bottom line is, we have an offset system that places profits over science, and the rules regulating it are just far too lax. And the reason I know that is, remember when I said, 5 minutes ago, that I could set up a carbon registry? You already knew where this was heading, right?

Speaker 1

21:51

You knew if they had a loophole where I could set up a registry, establish whatever standards I wanted, and start listing projects, that I was going right through that fucking loophole, right? You knew that was gonna happen. Well, I'm glad to say that you were correct. We set up Oliver's Offsets Carbon Registry, and I'm thrilled to announce an exciting new project that meets our exacting standards.

Speaker 1

22:11

So please, come with me. -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 6

22:12

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE AND

Speaker 1

22:12

WHISTLING ♪ Because, As you're about to see, we have trees in our studio now. Trees that you can help protect while also offsetting your personal carbon footprint. Now, are any of these trees really under threat?

Speaker 1

22:26

I'm certainly gonna tell you that they are, because I won't cut down every single 1 of these fuckers here. I'll do it! Maybe there are birds living in here, or whales! Who knows?

Speaker 1

22:38

But don't worry, you can save these trees. Simply by sending me 1 dollar. We are issuing 10, 000 carbon credits, each of which will stop me cutting this tree down for exactly 5 minutes. All you have to do is go to oliversoffsets.org, pay me a dollar, and in return, we will send you back a card that you can use as proof that you are now carbon neutral.

Speaker 1

22:59

We're making big claims while doing very little, which honestly is entirely reflective of the system that we currently have. So, why not offset your carbon today? All proceeds will go to saving Irish whales and dolphins. And who on Earth would have a problem with that?

Speaker 1

23:15

Anyway, that's our show. Thank

Speaker 6

23:30

you