Essay by Eric Worrall
Who didn’t see this coming?
Capitalising on climate anxiety: what you need to know about ‘climate-washing’
Published: April 3, 2023 6.03am AEST
Laura Schuijers
Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and Lecturer in Law, University of SydneyPeople are increasingly making choices about which products to buy and which service providers to use on climate change grounds. With concerns about climate change now affecting most Australians, businesses that promote climate-aligned practices and make emissions-reduction promises have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.
But sometimes these claims fail to live up to reality. Climate-related greenwashing, or “climate-washing”, communicates a message that exaggerates or misrepresents climate credentials through advertising, branding, labelling or reporting.
Examples include where corporate marketing and government campaigns promising “net-zero emissions by 2050” are not backed by a credible plan. Or products are promoted as “carbon neutral” or “climate friendly” when they’re not. It also includes where banks and other investors claim to fund a “cleaner future” when this is not completely true, potentially masking climate-related financial risk.
Climate-washing is a problem because the offending businesses capitalise on climate anxiety. It also allows businesses lacking robust credentials to gain customers and market advantage on false pretences. Ultimately, it also hinders rather than helps progress towards emissions reduction goals.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/capitalising-on-climate-anxiety-what-you-need-to-know-about-climate-washing-202507
The first people on Laura Schuijers’ list should be companies offering carbon credits.
Back in February WUWT reported on a Four Corners expose about practices they called “Carbon Colonialism”, allegations a major carbon credit business was exploiting and ripping off native owners of tropical forests with sharp business practices, and producing carbon credits from a “pristine” forest subject to industrial scale logging, while selling those allegedly dubious carbon credits for millions of dollars to big businesses in Australia and elsewhere. Four corners also alleges the CEO of the carbon credit business NIHT was once sued by the US SEC for defrauding investors.
As far as I know, nothing happened after the Four Corners expose. Normally when Four Corners accuses a business of questionable practices, charges are laid, or at the very least the targeted party lays low for a while. But not in this case. NIHT is carrying on like nothing happened, you can still buy their carbon credits online for $18.00 / ton.
Where are the big climate activist protests, the mass demands these alleged carbon fraudsters and neo-colonialist exploiters of indigenous people be shut down? Where are the Aussie government investigations into alleged sharp practices which undermine the integrity of their plan to save the world with carbon credits?
Why are most climate activists so uninterested in carbon credit scandals, or false claims products are low carbon?
I believe the answer is most people don’t want to know. Carbon credits and purchases of low carbon products aren’t about saving the planet, they’re about virtue signalling, showing the world the purchaser is a good person, or a good company director.
Someone who offers low cost carbon credits from dubious sources, or falsely markets their product as climate friendly, is offering virtue signallers a money saving opportunity. Cut price virtue signalling.
The global insurance biz is based on this. Wanna buy some earthquake insurance?
Are insurance companies that urban municipal governments are forced to buy policies from bringing cities closer to bankruptcy?
https://www.ey.com/en_ca/assurance/climate-change-energy
Eric,
As you know in December last, the Chubb Review of ACCUs found that the system of carbon credits in Australia was “essentially sound”.
The Review followed criticisms of ACCUs by Professor Macintosh of ANU,ex-head of the Government’s Emissions Reductions Assurance Committee, who described the carbon market as largely “a sham” with the majority of credits not representing real cuts to emissions.
Unimpressed by the Chubb Review finding,Professor Macintosh said,
”They’re recommending sweeping governance changes but they’re trying to maintain there’s nothing wrong with the projects and the credits.
That makes no sense to me.
The Report presents no evidence to support the conclusion.”
The 16 recommendations of the Chubb Review will be implemented but the basic flaws of ACCUs will be studiously ignored by the Government and most of the main stream media.
I am conflicted on this. As “carbon credits” are the current version of indulgences, fraud relating to a fraudulent virtue signal is getting self referential. Since it is fraud all the way down, one more layer of fraud makes no difference. It is like false labeling on homeopathic products. As the product is distilled water anyway, how does one determine fraud?
Homeopaths provide enough information so anyone with basic knowledge of chemistry can determine what the are actually getting is pure water.
With carbon credit scammers, you have to check whether a) thr forest exists and b) it is in an untouched state, not being logged or cleared for farming.
But with homeopaths, they are claiming to have performed a ritual of successively diluting the product, until it is pure water. One is supposed to trust the homeopath that the dilutions were actually performed. It is a matter of trust in an inherently bogus claim that is the parallel.
I see a sliver of difference. People don’t prosecute priests for claiming God is watching out for people, when something bad happens to them.
So providing enough physical information about the process to determine what is left is water, then claiming a magical effect, that the memory of the toxin is preserved, I think falls into the category of protected spiritual belief, even if you and I think the claims are absurd.
That is possibly the best description of “climate change” I have ever seen!
The man who sued god
Brilliant 2001 Australian comedy film starring Billy Connolly & Judy Davis
Trailer … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZfJywXiRyw&t=1s
Full video … https://ok.ru/video/83598379656
The curious thing about the carbon credits scam is that both parties – the provider of carbon credits and the purchaser of them – have a vested interest in the continuation of the scam.
Just think about all those who fly to climate conferences by private jet. They spend real money on carbon credits, but without the carbon credit scam, their whole world collapses. Of course, the money they spend is usually someone else’s.
Who is the bigger crook?
Laura Shuijers, Deputy Director, Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law and Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney; or the people flogging cheap ‘carbon credits’?
Not much to choose between them, so far as I can see.
Some dopey Academic trying to scare people with bogus science, or scam artists making a crust on the back of her scam. No honour between Thieves.
I’m happy to give Laura the benefit of the doubt, she probably thinks she is doing good, in the context of her personal belief system.
That makes her a useful idiot.
Or possibly just an idiot.
I have 200 trees. I will tie a blue ribbon on a tree and promise not to cut and burn it for the remainder of my ownership of the property. Just send $250 per tree you want to save.
Documentation will follow when your check clears. 😊
Might actually work, providing you send pictures of photogenic wildlife living in the trees….
I see how that works.
Month One, sell 200 ribbons for $50000.
Month Two, sell property to a company that your spouse owns, clear cut the trees and sell the lumber/firewood.
Month Three, sell 1000 certificates of planting saplings at $50 each, buy 1000 saplings, plant 200, sell 800 (cash sale, no records), record appalling 80% loss of trees due no doubt to climate change. Sell property and purchase a new woodlot.
Month 4-6, repeat the above on the new property.
Rinse and repeat.
That did seem to be the business model for most of the managed tree plantations (pine, olives, paulownia, etc) about 20 years ago, but that was before carbon offsets.
The art is that it takes 10+ years to reach any level of production, and the poor trees either died of drought or flooding before that. Meanwhile, there were rather good management fees to be made. It seemed a bit like “The Producers”
Trading Places, the TRADERS make 90% of the profits, since they only do the TRADING and have almost no overhead.
The brokers do, not the traders. Taking a small bite of each transaction works quite nicely as long as the transaction volumes are high enough.
Those plantation schemes had quite low trade volumes after their initial sales.
beat me to it
Darn, I didn’t see your comment before I left mine…you beat me to it.
Ah, but once you have the money, then you harvest the trees and sell them to a biomass company that then turns them into “low emission electricity”, more $$, then you sell some more credits for planting new trees.
The circular economy writ large.
Get with the program John. World isn’t going to save itself.
Even better: I have 100 acres of forest. I’m going to allow a lumber company to clearcut the forest and sell them the trees.
Now I have 100 acres of cleared land and the money for the trees I sold.
Next, if you purchase a “carbon offset” from me for, say, $100, I’ll plant a tree on my land.
So, the climate alarm crowd finances the replanting of my cash crop with with a bonus profit on top of that.
With proper planning and rotation of areas, I could have a steady annual income stream and help rich people feel good about themselves in spite of their massive carbon footprint simultaneously.
Well what do you know. One climate shyster promoting & profiting from the “climate fear” doesn’t like another bunch of shysters cutting themselves in on the rort.
What the hell did she expect, honesty among thieves!
Thanks to blogger Ross at Jo Nova today, we have the new word TOTTING from a long German word meaning “death from silence”. TOTTING is a way to avoid discussing an issue by saying nothing. It is not new, but it has seen huge growth since social media took off. Personally, I hate those lacking either the courtesy of intelligence to respond fairly to a fair question.
Author Laura Schuijers above, in relation to 4 Corners, is really having a hissy about TOTTING.
Mind you, just because info comes from the ABC 4 Corners program, it must not be assumed to be accurate. I was in a 4 Corners episode one, never again. TOTTING was at work. I would say not to film here and there as it was not relevant to the issue, but my TOTTING failed because they ignored what I wanted to stop. Their TOTTING, ignoring what I said was important to show, was stronger.
Geoff S
One can’t accuse Nick Stokes of Totting, Griff and Mosher on the other hand
Like a version of the broken window fallacy, the money spent on completely useless commodities like carbon credits or indulgences eventually degrades the currency.
Money is earned by actual valuable labor. Providing useful services, food and so on. Then by government fiat or fad it is spent on something with no value. It is not entirely wasted because the fraudsters who benefit do also spend some of it on actual goods. Think of the ice cream in Nancy Pelosi’s expensive refrigerator. But this is really just churn, like the water around a shark feeding frenzy.
You can’t really act surprised if inflation soars when large amounts are spent for nothing. Eventually this all evens out, in the same way that a small child eventually tires of subsisting on cotton candy. But I don’t have Janet Yellen’s faith in a soft landing this time.
Consumer price inflation is caused by the Federal Reserve Bank creating credit out of thin air. That credit creation is usually used to indirectly fund Federal budget deficits.
What people chose to buy with their money does not affect the overall price level.
The broken window fallacy is about destroying assets (wealth) to create work rebuilding those assets. It has nothing to do with consumer price inflation.
Inflation is always a monetary issue: The supply of money and credit versus the supply of goods and services.
You explanation is not accurate.
We call it greenwashing in the US
‘….masking climate-related financial risk’
I assume this is her imagined climate-related financial risk such as investing in oil, gas and coal companies as opposed to pissing money up the wall on green technology and unreliable taxpayer subsidised energy.
From the article: “NIHT is carrying on like nothing happened, you can still buy their carbon credits online for $18.00 / ton.”
I have carbon credits for sale for $15.00/ton.
Just kidding! I don’t have any real carbon credits for sale, but apparently, neither does NIHT.
Think of all the money wasted over the unreasonable, unwarranted fear of CO2 by our failed leadership.
Nothing related to “Net Zero by 2050” is backed by a credible plan, or even half a credible plan.
“Don’t begin vast programs with half-vast ideas.”
And, as a reminder, just last week someone questioned Bill Gates about the penchant for “green” crusaders to travel via private jet. His response? It’s OK because we “offset”.
Meaning they buy
indulgences“carbon credits” from thechurchclimate industry.“rules for thee but not for me”