As world leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the 26th UN climate conference (COP26), one issue had dominated the negotiation table: Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which aims to set a global framework for carbon offset trading. The basic idea behind this is carbon emitters can “offset” their pollution by buying “credits” from projects that claim to reduce carbon emission by planting forests or investing in renewable energy elsewhere. That way, without actually cutting emissions, a polluting company could still proudly call itself “carbon neutral” by buying a number of offset credits supposedly equivalent to its carbon emission…
California’s carbon-offset disaster reveals why COP26 was a big disappointment
