Der Bezos Earth Fund wird bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts 10 Milliarden Dollar für den Kampf gegen die Klima und die Biodiversitätskrise zur Verfügung stellen. Die Mittel des Fonds geben ihm enormen Einfluss. Viele in der NGOs Szene sehen die Politik des Fonds als Gefährdung für die Unabhängigkeit der von ihm geförderten Organisationen. Der Guardian berichtet anlässlich einer Preisverleihung kritisch vor allem über das Engagement des Fonds für CO2 Kompensationen. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/20/jeff-bezos-earth-fund-carbon-offsets-climate-sector-uneasy-aoe

Ein neuer Standard für Caroen Credits verzichtet auf das Konzept einer angeblichen CO2-Neutralität durch sogenannte Carbon Offsets. Stattdessen werden nur Beiträge zu einer tatsächlicher Reduktion der CO2 Emissionen akzeptiert. Dass viele Unternehmen sich an diesem Standard orientieren wollen, hängt auch damit zusammen, das Gerichtsverfahren gegen wahrheitswidrige Behauptungen von CO2 Neutralität begonnen wurden.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/10/carbon-offsetting-environmental-claims-aoe

• 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
  • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
  • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
  • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
  • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
  • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
  • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
    • https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
  • This is the current state of offsets

31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

• 32:30 Neo-colonialism

  • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
  • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
  • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
  • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach

• 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

  • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
  • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
  • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
  • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
  • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire

• 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

  • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
  • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
  • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
  • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production

• 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

  • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.

• 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

  • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
  • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
  • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted

• 51:00 Degrowth making headway

  • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies

• 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

  • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
  • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
  • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
  • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
  • This is what it is to be human