Non-profit news agencies Mongabay and the New Humanitarian published a joint report on Wednesday that debunked the United Nations’ extravagant claims of “climate neutrality.”
What the U.N. is actually doing, according to the report, is buying millions of dollars worth of “carbon credits” to “offset” its substantial emissions. Some of the projects that are supposedly “offsetting” the U.N.’s emissions are actually damaging the environment — or even the health of human beings.
“Carbon credits” are basically a shell game in which carbon emitters buy “permits” to spew more carbon dioxide from industries supposedly reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Environmental regulations have turned the carbon credit market into a grotesque billion-dollar “industry” that does not actually produce anything — it merely shuffles paperwork so that agencies and corporations can claim they are “carbon neutral” even though they still have prodigious emissions.
Some climate activists are growing a bit skeptical of the carbon credit industry, which theoretically helps cleanse the atmosphere by subsiding carbon-reducing projects that might not otherwise be profitable. The report pointed to Doctors Without Borders as an example of an organization that has sworn off carbon credits altogether.
