Dear Friends,
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN, as Charles Goldman joins Ed as co-host.
Carbon offsets: Greenwashing on steroids. I’ll cut to the chase: Carbon offsets are a scam and the glowing language in corporate ads is mostly bunk. Comedian and news commentator John Oliver does a bang-up job analyzing and eviscerating offsets. It’s worth watching all 23 minutes of Oliver’s program (language alert to those sensitive to such things … sorry, Mom).
Dr. Charles Goldman cohosts this week’s Fallon Forum.
If you want a shorter but less colorful dig into carbon offsets, that’s the first topic Charles and I tackle on this week’s program.
I know, the idea sounds glorious. A corporation negates its carbon-spewing ways by planting trees or putting up windmills. Yet as Oliver points out, “study after study has indicated that most offsets on the market don’t reliably reduce emissions.”
It’s not just corporations engaged in this brand of greenwashing. Individuals can also assuage their climate guilt. Some airlines let you offset 1,000 miles of travel for a mere $2. You can also offset the carbon footprint of your pet: 50 cents per hamster, $6 per cat, and $10 per pet pig. If you think it’s getting kind of silly, then we agree.
Not surprisingly, some orgs in the National Non-profit Industrial Complex are complicit in the carbon-offset scam. The Nature Conservancy partners with planet-lovers JP Morgan, Disney, and BlackRock. (Great story about this in Bloomberg. Yes, Bloomberg! Didn’t see that coming, did ya?)
As the story in Bloomberg points out, “Rather than dramatically change their operations—JPMorgan executives continue to jet around the globe, Disney’s cruise ships still burn oil, and BlackRock’s office buildings gobble up electricity—the corporations are working with the Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental group, to employ far-fetched logic to help absolve them of their climate sins. By taking credit for saving well-protected land, these companies are reducing nowhere near the pollution that they claim.”
The only way to honestly offset one’s carbon footprint is to stop polluting. I know, not fouling the atmosphere might be bad for business. But at the end of the quarter, though your earnings might be down, at least you’ve still got a planet.
Bill Gates buys the farm. Sorry, rich people, Charles and I aren’t done picking on you. Bill Gates now owns over 270,000 acres of farmland, making him the largest private owner of farmland in the US.
Why is Gates buying all this farmland? Speculation runs rampant, and none of it is good. One very real and immediate impact is that, for every acre Gates grabs, that’s less land available for local farmers to purchase and farm.
“What about the free market!” you cry. Well, I’m pretty sure Bill Gates (or China … read on) can outbid Farmer Joe. That’s because the free market only works when rules are in place to prevent a few rich guys from owning everything, and in most US states, such rules either don’t exist or aren’t working.
Here’s where I agree with Charlie Kirk, a conservative talk show host, who recently tweeted: “Bill Gates just bought 2,100 acres of farmland in North Dakota, adding to the 270,000 acres he inexplicably owns throughout the US. China also just bought 300 acres there, adding to the 192,000 acres of US soil in their portfolio … and no one seems to care. Why do we allow this?”
Great question, Charlie. We should care and this shouldn’t be allowed. You’d think state lawmakers across the political spectrum would be chomping at the bit to unite and fix the problem.
California’s ban on gas-powered vehicles. Something less likely to unite Republicans and Democrats is, well, anything that California does. It’s a mystery, but many Republicans just flat-out oppose electric cars. I guess it’s just some people’s nature to distrust anything new. (Ok, maybe I’m guilty, too, given that my bicycle is 37 years old and my wallet just celebrated its 25th birthday.)
The question Charles and I debate is what happens to California’s law in 2024 if Trump becomes president and the US Congress goes Republican? I think the feds will try to pre-empt California’s law. Charles disagrees. Hopefully, we won’t have to see which one of us is right.
In the meantime, the Republican-controlled Virginia legislature is taking steps to unhinge itself from California’s air quality standards. That would allow the status quo to continue regarding gas-guzzling mobiles.
For me, while I support a shift to EVs, the question most of these discussions ignores is this: At what point do we address the fact that there are (1) too many cars, highways, and parking lots, (2) limited resources, (3) more humans than the Earth can sustain, and (4) members of one species (especially Homo Americanis) that consume too much stuff? In other words, at what point do we transform failed economic models (both crony capitalism and centralized communism) to economies based on sustainability instead of endless growth?
Harvard museum exhibit not so “wicked smaht.” Kathy and I were wandering around Cambridge, MA, earlier this year when we stumbled upon a climate exhibit. This was an exciting discovery, until we toured the exhibit. So disappointing! That’s all I’m gonna say, but after you listen to our conversation during the last ten minutes of the program, please let me know if we judged the exhibit too harshly.
Thanks for reading, listening, and taking action. — Ed
*******
— Carbon offsets: Greenwashing on steroids;
— Bill Gates buys the farm;
— California’s ban on gas-powered vehicles;
— Harvard museum exhibit not so “wicked smaht,” with Kathy Byrnes.
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Ed Fallon