Thread by @doctorow

The @ClimateAd Project's "Murder Offsets" PSA is a brilliant anti-greenwashing piece, comparing the way environmental criminals buy "carbon offsets" for their pollution to a system where murderers escape culpability by buying "murder offsets."

climateadproject.com/offsets/

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To be sure, markets created the climate emergency by allowing firms to reduce their costs by externalizing them on the rest of us - juicing profits by polluting rather than switching to cleaner, more expensive production techniques.

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But it doesn't follow that markets will solve these problems if only weforce firms to internalize these external costs - say, by creating carbon offsets with tradeable credits.

The externalizing of costs didn't occur in a vacuum: it was deliberate, and self-accellerating.

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Executives at companies like @exxonmobil knew they were on track to literally drive our species to the brink of extinction.

They diverted some of the profits they received from this externalizing activity to a sophisticated disinformation campaign to create climate denial.

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The idea that these executives simple "responded to incentives" - rather than the idea that they are deliberate, cold- blooded murderers - is laughably naive.

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This is why all "green" investing ends up being a market for lemons, with "Environmental, Social, and Governance" (ESG) funds stuffed full of the world's worst polluters, from fast fashion companies to giant oil companies.

pluralistic.net/2021/03/24/gre…

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It's why carbon pricing is disfavored by the people who've done the deepest work on the scale of the crisis and the likely outcomes from different interventions, like the authors of the excellent "Making Climate Policy Work":

wiley.com/en-us/Making+C…

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Cap-and-trade isn't working. The Paris Accord targets fall short of what's needed, and what's been done falls short of the Paris Accord.

nakedcapitalism.com/2021/04/expert…

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Cap-and-trade implies that there's a "right way" to do carbon-intensive industry, and moreover, that the market will find it. As the Murder Offsets video makes clear, this is absurd.

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If an activity threatens our species, decisions about whether and when it will be carried out should be determined by democratically accountable governments with evidence from experts - not from CEOs buying free-market indulgences to absolve themselves of responsibility.

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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for…

eof/