Net zero emissions and the carbon offset fraud

To: Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
August 18, 2021
RE: Corporate environmentalism claims it is moving towards net zero carbon emissions while it is actually utilizing fraudulent carbon offsets

As the planet heats up:
Corporate environmentalism is a swindle

by Frank Arango, Seattle Workers' Voice.

This has been a summer of record-smashing heatwaves, unprecedented floods and mega-droughts. The heat and drought conditions have also contributed to wildfires that are releasing scores of millions more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And once there, these wildfire emissions are mixing with the emissions coming from the burning of fossil fuels, which is the biggest cause of Earth's rapid heating. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is a "code red for humanity," while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says July was the world's hottest month ever recorded.

So these are the latest warnings that humanity faces a truly existential crisis due to global warming. They show that, among other things, radical measures must be taken now in order to stop the burning of fossil fuels. But the fossil fuel industry and its political supporters are resisting this in every way they can.

Fighting to profit until the last oil derrick is in flames

Over the next decade, the world’s biggest oil companies plan to pump more oil than ever. According to research commissioned by the Guardian, "Shell and ExxonMobil will be among the leaders with a projected production increase of more than 35% between 2018 and 2030 – a sharper rise than over the previous 12 years," and none of the top 20 oil companies dispute the projections in the Guardian article. (1) Additionally, in 2020 China built over three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined, and it's presently on a binge of building still more coal-fired power plants. (2) Along with this, the British government refuses to rule out licensing a new coal mine in northwest England, and Biden has refused to reverse Trump's executive that allows coal to be exported from West Coast ports.

Using carbon offsets as a scam

But while the big coal, oil, gas and other polluting capitalists are planning to pollute as much or more than ever, large numbers of them are at the same time pledging to have zero net emissions, or carbon neutrality, by 2050. They do this by claiming they're offsetting the emissions they're responsible for by investing in planting forests and other projects that capture carbon dioxide. But carbon off-setting has been going on for a long time, and it has proven to be a spectacular failure. For example, a voluminous report commissioned by the European Union has shown that 85% of offsets failed to reduce emissions. (3) Further, it has been estimated that for just one oil company, Shell, to offset its continued fossil-fuel activity by planting trees would require a forest the size of Brazil. (4) And, in this regard, ecologist Dr. Bonnie Waring summarizes her forest research with the following warning:

"But the fact is that there aren’t enough trees to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be....If we absolutely maximized the amount of vegetation all land on Earth could hold, we’d sequester enough carbon to offset about ten years of greenhouse gas emissions at current rates. After that, there could be no further increase in carbon capture." (5)

Thus, the need to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions now.

Looking to technology for salvation

President Biden's special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, confessed as much when he told the April "Leaders Summit on Climate" the following:

“You said twice, getting to net zero is going to be hard, really hard. And just remind everybody that it will depend on whether or not we have breakthrough technologies, some breakthrough inventions ... " (6)

Well, yes. Driven to profit until their doom, the polluters and their political supporters have long looked to technological innovations that would allow them to continue with business as usual. Some of these, like inventing large machines to suck CO2 from the air, seem far down the road. But in order to reach their goal of reaching zero net emissions, the polluters have seriously been working on two innovations for years, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and it's spin-off, Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The results have not been good.

CCS involves capturing CO2 from smoke stacks and transporting a liquefied form of it to suitable geological storage sites. But except for a small demonstration project, this has never been done. Moreover, it is tremendously expensive.

The theory behind BECCS is to grow trees or other crops that suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, burn their pellets in power stations in order to produce electricity, capture the CO2 emissions from the smokestacks and then bury the compressed CO2 deeply in the earth. Moreover, the BECCS proponents hold up the government-subsidized Drax power station in England as the model of what can be done. But besides burning wood pellets instead of coal, it has done very little to help the environment while doing a lot to harm it. For example, during the decade and more that it has been burning wood pellets, except for a tiny experimental project, it has captured no emissions. In fact, the owners now say the first carbon capture unit *could* be operational by 2027, and it needs six units.(They don't say when they'll be ready to implement their plan to bury the compressed CO2 in abandoned North Sea oil wells.) What's more, Drax has had to ship in its wood pellets from as far away as western Canada and the southeastern United States, as well as from Estonia, Latvia and Portugal. But mono-culture tree plantations decrease biodiversity, and logging to supply Drax with pellets is having a devastating overall impact on Baltic forests in particular. (7)

Moreover, since the Drax plant only produces six or seven per cent of England's electricity, how much land would have to be devoted to tree plantations globally for Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage to do what its proponents claim it would do? Well, estimates range from an area the size of Australia to an area the size of the Indian subcontinent to an area twice the size of the Indian subcontinent. That does not leave much room for planting multi-species forests with the intent of letting them grow for hundreds of years in order to capture CO2, as well as for many other reasons.

Large and sustained cuts in human-caused greenhouse gas emissions must be made rapidly

In April, three well-known scientists, including a former Chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released an article denouncing what has been done under the banner of achieving zero net emissions. (8) Among the many things they argue are that "The idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier 'burn now, pay later' approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar...Current net zero policies will not keep warming to within 1.5°C because they were never intended to. They were and still are driven by a need to protect business as usual, not the climate...In principle there is nothing wrong or dangerous about carbon dioxide removal proposals. The problems come when it is assumed that these can be deployed at vast scale. This effectively serves as a blank check for the continued burning of fossil fuels and the acceleration of habitat destruction..."

Well, achieving net zero would be progress, but many of the largest polluting corporations in the world are pledging to achieve zero net emissions while at the same time increasing their emissions. For example, the UK aviation industry has pledged a net zero target while at the same time planning to expand Heathrow Airport (one of the world's busiest) and to increase overall flight numbers. What they're all gambling on is that some day, some way, someone will come up with a technology that removes their greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. But from our side, it would be ludicrous to stake the future of billions of people on such a gamble.

We need a radical movement fighting for real solutions

Such a movement must fight for a quick reduction of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and it cannot concern itself with the profits of the coal, oil and gas companies.

Nor can this movement concern itself with the wealth of the capitalists more generally. Trillions of dollars are going to be needed to feed and house tens of millions and then hundreds of of millions of climate refugees all over the globe, trillions more to pay for defending coastlines from rising seas and for other vast infrastructure projects, trillions more for radical changes in industry and agriculture, etc. The rich should be forced to bear the burden of these costs, not the working people.

Such a movement must demand that governments go over to economic planning and regulation that is transparent and has teeth. For example, there must be a plan for such things as how much fossil fuel production can be ordered shut down each year as it is replaced by renewables, and for where the fired workers will get new jobs. These things cannot be left to the market or to vague promises about green jobs, there have to be such jobs waiting.

What's more, the masses of people must demand that their voices be heard in all government planning and regulation, and they must rely on street and other mass actions whether or not they're allowed into meetings. There is no other way to defend against the bureaucrats, technocrats and politicians ignoring the interests of the indigenous peoples, national minorities and the broad working class.

Meanwhile, from this framework we should support all efforts of environmentalists to get better organized, as well as support ongoing struggles like the fight to stop the logging of the remaining old growth forests on Vancouver Island (Fairy Creek) and the fight against Enbridge's expansion of Line 3 in order to pipe more Alberta tar sands oil across Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin. (9)