More Than Half of Carbon Credit Auditors Have Signed Off on 'Overclaimed' Benefits (science.org)
- Reference: 0178371468
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/14/0058203/more-than-half-of-carbon-credit-auditors-have-signed-off-on-overclaimed-benefits
- Source link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4864
Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes."
> Most carbon offset projects that have been closely scrutinized — including projects for [3]forest protection , [4]renewable energy , and [5]methane-reducing methods of rice cultivation — have greatly exaggerated their climate benefits. More than 80% of [6]issued credits might not reflect real emission reductions. This has alarmed potential offset purchasers and [7]stalled carbon offset markets.
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> Efforts to resuscitate the beleaguered offset market tout third-party auditing as " [8]essential " to ensuring credit integrity. That reliance is misplaced... [E]xtensive research from many contexts shows that auditors selected and paid by audited organizations often produce results skewed toward those entities' interests. A [9]field experiment in India, for example, found that air and water pollution auditors who were randomly assigned and paid from a central fund reported emissions at levels 50 to 70% higher than auditors selected and paid by audited firms. Auditors — like all people — are subject to a well-established and largely unconscious cognitive phenomenon of [10]self-serving bias , causing them to [11]interpret evidence in favor of their clients...
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> [A]uditors have been required all along and have failed to prevent substantial credit overclaiming. It is rarely acknowledged that all of the credit overclaiming projects that have stirred so much controversy were ratified by third-party auditors under the same auditor selection and payment system that offset advocates rely on today... Auditors are unlikely to stay in business if they disapprove credits at the high rates that research suggests would be appropriate today...
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> Given the high planetary stakes in carbon policy choices being made now, it is past time to recognize that third-party auditors selected and paid by the audited organizations are not the bulwark for credit integrity they are claimed to be.
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4864
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5345783
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
[4] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-carbon-offsets-renewable-energy/
[5] https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/03/28/revealed-how-shell-cashed-in-on-dubious-carbon-offsets-from-chinese-rice-paddies/
[6] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53645-z
[7] https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/publications/2024-state-of-the-voluntary-carbon-markets-sovcm/
[8] https://icvcm.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CCP-Section-3-V1.1-FINAL-15May24.pdf#page=6
[9] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/128/4/1499/1850465
[10] https://hbr.org/2002/11/why-good-accountants-do-bad-audits
[11] https://hbr.org/2002/11/why-good-accountants-do-bad-audits
Unicornia is the land of Net Zero (Score:2)
None of the Net Zero plans I have seen survive any kind of rigorous scrutiny. It is either green-washed via highly dubious offset credits or green-washed via outsourcing emissions.
Re: (Score:1)
> None of the Net Zero plans I have seen survive any kind of rigorous scrutiny. It is either green-washed via highly dubious offset credits or green-washed via outsourcing emissions.
I have little doubt now that carbon credits are just "green washing", an effort to allow maintaining the status quo on CO2 emissions by paying someone to pretend they are doing something that would not otherwise be done to make the status quo a net zero effort.
Where the scam begins in this is often a claim that because the carbon emitter is paying money there were some trees, or something, saved from destruction. This is a scam because either the trees were not threatened to begin with, or by paying this m
Fuck their conclusion (Score:2)
> Their conclusion? "Criticism should be directed not at individual auditors as much as the structure of the system that fosters these outcomes."
There is plenty of room to criticize both. You also can't arrest the system, but you can arrest frauds. Fuck their conclusion.
Yes you Can (Score:2)
> You also can't arrest the system,
In this case you can. You simply have to eliminate the system of carbon credits. The whole idea of carbon emissions as property is absurd and obvious when pasted onto a system of selling credits for reducing emissions.
Example: I own a small woodlot and sell wood to the local paper mill. You agree to paying me for not cutting my trees. The local paper mill buys logs from someone else. You go the the paper mill and it agrees to reduce the logs it buys so it has to reduce the paper it produces. The customer
I mean no shit Sherlock (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a scam just like recycling his old scam to keep the plastic industry going.
One of the things that frustrates me is an adult is how we have all these bizarre fucked up scams that make up our civilization and society that we all just kind of shrug our shoulders at and allow.
It's the old boiling of frog trick. If you took a kid and you told them how dishonest adults are they'd be pretty fucking pissed but you grow up learning one scam after another.
The one that got me first as a kid was Christopher Columbus and finding out he was an absolute monster. Like Adolf Hitler grade son of a bitch. There are plenty of others though.
Re: (Score:2)
> that make up our civilization and society that we all just kind of shrug our shoulders at and allow.
I am surprised you have yet to understand that personal freedom and small government is about countering exactly this. The more you expand the government and regulation, the more room you create for someone connected to run these scams.
Re: (Score:2)
_Non_sequitur_!
If you have personal freedom and small government, then anybody can just connect with their friends and run scams without others interfering.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> The one that got me first as a kid was Christopher Columbus and finding out he was an absolute monster. Like Adolf Hitler grade son of a bitch. There are plenty of others though.
I doubt Christopher Columbus was a saint as all people have flaws but he did have a mission and he wasn't above taking advantage of natives in the Americas to get done what he set out to do. That hardly makes him a "Hitler grade" SOB. Columbus wasn't about the genocide of the native Americans. There's little doubt that the spread of disease from Europe to the Americas lead to many deaths, but with germ theory being something like 400 years in the future there can be little blame placed on Columbus for thi
Re: (Score:2)
> I doubt Christopher Columbus was a saint as all people have flaws but he did have a mission and he wasn't above taking advantage of natives in the Americas to get done what he set out to do. That hardly makes him a "Hitler grade" SOB
True, he was more of a Captain Cook, as he was a slaver and a rapist.