Thread by @philsturgeon

🌍 There are so many scammers in the carbon offset space. Protecting woodlands that were never threatened is an incredibly common scam, along with getting paid for planting timber plantations being planted anyway, then they just cut them later. 🤬

https://twitter.com/climate/status/1379183137364664321

Then there’s this shite. Nigel Farage has nobody’s best interests at heart ever. Maybe he feels bad that Brexit trashed the UK’s reforestation efforts, but more likely he’s cashing in on the tsunami of corporate greenwashing. thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/…

I know for-profit companies in reforestation, rewilding, and carbon sequestration. Being for profit isn’t the problem, they’re actually saving the planet a little bit and making money, which helps them scale (and get more investment), not just lying to generate carbon credits.

Then there’s flight offsetting. “Ryanair offering passengers the chance to give a €1 donation towards a carbon offsetting scheme. The tree planting schemes will offset only 0.01% of the airline's total emissions.” If they even plant those trees... telegraph.co.uk/travel/destina…

It’s something I struggle with often. We have corporations approaching @GrowingTheTrees wanting to invest because they need carbon offset credits. We need land to do our work. If we pay them back with Forestry Commission approved woodlandcarboncode.org.uk credits I’m ok with that.

But if an airline wanted to invest... would I say yes? If the land was immediately put in our name, then they piss off and leave our ecologists and the Forest Commission to call the shots, then yes, I probably would. Otherwise it’s just free labour enabling greenwashing.

There’s a few less CO2ish companies who want to partner up and that’s fine with me. The woodland credits we generate are through the Forestry Commission, it’s on them if they overestimate. We just present our woodland management plan and they audit/verify.

One example of a brilliant reputable for profit company: thefutureforestcompany.com.

They buy degraded land, turn it into forest (not timber), farm wooly pigs (profit), use dead wood for biochar (profit), and sell Woodland Carbon Credits from leaving the trees alone (profit). Good!

Anyway, without money reforestation at the scale required isn’t going to happen. Land is expensive. Donations/taxpayer money helps, but when possible I think I’d rather take corporations money, and have full control over the work being done. Then they can’t cheat us. 😑