CARBON CREDITS

Have you ever wondered about carbon credits?  Is it real?  Is it a scam? 

                  Turns out, a bit of both.  Turns out the carbon credit industry has been flooding the public with grossly overestimated figures because the offset claims are all based on a baseline.  The baseline is the estimated use of energy in a given situation.

                  An air conditioned house set at 65 uses a lot more energy than an air conditioned house at 75.  Because baselining allows huge subjective assumptions, audits of savings estimates have found as little as one-thirteenth efficacy.  In other words, the press releases and sales only offset one-thirteenth of what was claimed.                  

                  A recent study by Barbara Haya, director of University of California Berkeley's Carbon Trading Project, "conservatively found that deforestation avoidance projects had provided less than a fourth of the carbon reductions they said they did," according to the Wall Street Journal. 

                  She pointed out that in the carbon credit industry, both parties benefit from inflating the actual offsets.  In real markets, one side wants lower prices and one wants higher prices, or claims, or whatever.  But in the carbon trading market, no such balance exists.  Both user and offsetter want bigger claims. 

                  Because of how out of whack and overstated claims have been, an accreditation group called Core Carbon Principles (CCP) is auditing the various platforms.  Using new technology to measure and new metrics to establish more credible baselines, the CCP is trying to inject authenticity and credibility into the carbon trading market.

                  This is exactly the kind of private certification that could be used for a host of things currently carrying government credentials, from organics to food safety to building codes.  Even food labels.  It could all be privatized by independent outfits funded by members and sponsors who don't want to get scammed.  The marketplace of any new venture must mature, or develop long enough for problems to arise.  And then the problems need to be big enough to see.  In carbon trading, that just happened.   

                  Once a market sector is known as a bad boy, then buyers and investors create their own gumshoes to sleuth the honorables.  The most disempowering thing anyone can say, to any societal malady, is "we need government oversight."  I've questioned the veracity of these carbon trading schemes from day one, but in their infancy and innovation the track records and data were insufficient to determine weaknesses and frauds. 

                  `The pool is big enough now to do that.  Perhaps in the next 5 years or so we'll see correction in the industry and it'll move to numbers people can trust.  Real projects with real figures will emerge and the movement will attract investors with more confidence.

                  `When people run to the government for a new agency, a new rule, a new license, it simply fuels the "agency capture" RFK Jr. talks about.  We don't need better people in government--well,  yes, we do--but what we really need is fewer people in government.  About a million newly unemployed federal workers can pick tomatoes and gut chickens when the deportations start.

                  How about that for a change?  At our farm, we've just released a new shirt with big letters across the front:  COMPOST THE BUREUACRATS.  And yes, a shutdown is wonderful.  I've lived through some lengthy shutdowns.  Best of times.  Most of the federal government runs on autopilot anyway, so a protracted shutdown just nibbles around the edges.  Bring it on.  Let the private sector and entrepreneurs step up, unfettered, to solve our problems.

                  What bureaucracy would you privatize?