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More Carbon Credit Fraud Uncovered: CEO of Verra Resigns

3 days ago
Guest Blogger
38 Comments

CEO of biggest carbon credit certifier to resign after claims offsets worthless

The Guardian did a joint investigation and helped uncover large amounts of malfeasance.

It comes amid concerns that Verra, a Washington-based nonprofit, approved tens of millions of worthless offsets that are used by major companies for climate and biodiversity commitments, according to a joint Guardian investigation earlier this year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/23/ceo-of-worlds-biggest-carbon-credit-provider-says-he-is-resigning?CMP=share_btn_tw

The announcement follows a difficult period for Verra, which has seen the environmental integrity of their carbon standard satirised by the comedian John Oliver and journalistic exposés about the integrity of their carbon credit certification process.

In January, a nine-month investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and the investigative group SourceMaterial found Verra rainforest credits used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations were largely worthless, often based on stopping the destruction of rainforests that were not threatened, according to independent studies. It also found evidence of forced evictions at a flagship scheme co-operated by Conservation International in Peru.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/23/ceo-of-worlds-biggest-carbon-credit-provider-says-he-is-resigning?CMP=share_btn_tw

…

Scientists have called for the unregulated system to be urgently reformed to finance climate mitigation and forest conservation despite current concerns about integrity.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/23/ceo-of-worlds-biggest-carbon-credit-provider-says-he-is-resigning?CMP=share_btn_tw

Good for the Guardian. You can read the story in its entirety here.

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John Hultquist
May 26, 2023 10:23 pm

“Carbon credits” are similar to indulgences of the German Dominican Johann Tetzel [1465-1519]). Those led to trouble for the Organization.
Anyone surprised by the current kerfuffle hasn’t been paying attention.

36
PCman999
Reply to  John Hultquist
May 26, 2023 10:50 pm

At least that money went towards building the amazing St. Peter’s in Rome. And while the carbon credits were duly approved and promoted by the government types (like Al Gore, who owns a similar scheme), Tetzel went rogue, one can’t sell indulgences – they are earned through the extra effort of a sinner through prayers at special times or places, or pilgrimages, and only applies to those who are truly penetant and have sorrow for their sins. It’s not about forgiveness but atonement.

3
Gums
Reply to  John Hultquist
May 27, 2023 12:25 pm

Salute!

I never understood carbon credits….especially for folks like me…basic home folks and do as much as I can to “save the planet” by re-cycle efforts, composting to avoid chemical fertilizer, growing my veggies, and on and on …..
How do I get those credits? What does the credit “credit” – my electric bill, my pay at the pump charge for my evil SUV?

Worst possibiity would be if the govment issued the credits, huh?

I want my credits!

Gums sends

2
John Hultquist
Reply to  Gums
May 27, 2023 12:58 pm

You have it backwards.
You are producing the “credits” and the trick is to sell them to an evil corporation that releases CO2 into the atmosphere.
Design a certificate and produce a sale site — get rich.
Examples can be found by searching with the images tab, try: “certificate of carbon credits”

3
kalsel3294
Reply to  Gums
May 28, 2023 8:18 am

if a football player kicks a goal for the opposing team, obviously his own team cannot claim the goal, but can the goal be credited to his goal kicking record?
Now hold that thought.
If an Australian farmer creates carbon credits and then sells them to an overseas company, doesn’t that then mean that the carbon credits the farmer produced can no longer be credited to the Australian carbon emissions reduction tally?

Last edited 1 day ago by kalsel3294
0
Mike Jonas
Editor
May 26, 2023 10:42 pm

Of course there’s corruption. In a ‘worthless carbon credits’ transaction, both sides benefit.

35
Phillip Bratby
May 27, 2023 12:55 am

What a surprise – not.

16
DMacKenzie
Reply to  Phillip Bratby
May 27, 2023 6:00 am

If fraudulent hucksters don’t issue carbon credits, then third world governments will be glad to do it…for planting trees, or successfully fighting forest fires, or going to organic farming by their peasants by stopping fertilizer imports, reducing fossil fuel imports, or some such nonsense.
Their population will sing in the socialist sunshine, harvesting the crops, paid minimum wage, while government will get paid for carbon certificates issued by a bureaucrat with a computer printer and a high incentive to hit the “print” button a few more times.

9
bnice2000
May 27, 2023 2:28 am

Only to be expected.

Afterall, the whole of the anti-CO2 scam/agenda is based on fraud. !

28
Tom Abbott
Reply to  bnice2000
May 27, 2023 5:31 am

Yes, here we have a fraud within a fraud.

12
Uncle Mort
May 27, 2023 2:37 am

Carbon Credit Fraud Uncovered
is rather like saying
Fraud Fraud Uncovered

21
2hotel9
May 27, 2023 3:12 am

Until all these criminal f*cks are severely punished this will continue.

13
Rod Evans
May 27, 2023 4:07 am

It is simply fraud piled on top of fraud.
It doesn’t stop at big business fraud either, read this account of a heat pump installation for £20,000 that didn’t quite live up to the hype.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/katie-investigates/broken-air-source-heat-pump-nobody-will-fix/

7
Ed Zuiderwijk
May 27, 2023 4:12 am

Even the Guardian ought to understand that ‘Green’ is a fantastic revenue model.

8
Joseph Zorzin
May 27, 2023 4:47 am

As hideous as that clearcut looks- all aside from the carbon credit scam- it will grow back unless turned into a cattle ranch or shopping center.

8
DMacKenzie
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
May 27, 2023 5:30 am

Yes, but it will take 80 years to re-sequester the CO2 in the cellulose and lignin that is presently sequestered by nature. Sure that square mile will regrow in 80 years, by which time 80 more square miles will have been harvested and be in various stages of regrowth. So really you are just committing to 80 years of CO2 emissions while feeling good that someday you will be able to say that your annual emissions are back where you started, of course ignoring the intervening 80 years. Got trees that will grow in 20 years ?….just 4x as much or 4x as fast.
On the other hand, if you make useful stuff out of the wood that lasts a hundred years, say furniture or wooden houses with a planned hundred year lifespan, then situation is much different than making say fast food wrappers to line our roadways, and calling them “green”..

-7
Joseph Zorzin
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 27, 2023 6:47 am

total nonsense but I’m not going to waste time trying to enlighten you

1
DMacKenzie
Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
May 28, 2023 1:38 pm

Just like you won’t waste time putting your numbers into a spreadsheet.

0
Drake
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 27, 2023 11:28 am

Total Nonsense, but unlike Joe, I will respond.

How much of the wood was used for furniture and other wood products or for building materials that will be used for a structure that will survive possibly hundreds of years???

Just THINK, I know I am asking a lot, of all the WOOD in houses around the world that has been in those houses already for hundreds of years. That is “sequestered “carbon”!!!

Now in the US, hugh McMansions are being built continuously made from dimensional lumber BUT due to envirowacos, (actually TJIs and other structural lower WOOD use members are an economical choice due to the restrictions the government of the US put into place for logging on BLM/Forest service land) a bunch of laminated or other non-dimensional lumber products to save the trees, don’t you know!!!

NOW the use of these members with LESS wood that dimensional lumber is sequestering LESS “”CARBON””. Yet again, the leftist control freaks have worked counter to their NEXT perceived disaster.

So for you, cut down a forest the wood is turned directly to “”carbon””???

Clueless!!!

8
DMacKenzie
Reply to  Drake
May 28, 2023 1:43 pm

Again find some percentages of wood made into various products and put them into a century long spreadsheet including when items are sent to the landfill….to find out that what you think you know…you don’t…

0
Graham
Reply to  DMacKenzie
May 27, 2023 4:14 pm

We grow three rotations of Radiata pine trees in 80 years in New Zealand . 25 to 28 year per rotation.
We export a large amount of logs and timber to the Pacific Rim countries.
Construction timber will last in buildings for well over 100 years so it is a carbon sink.
Even treated fence posts will last well over 50 years which is still a carbon sink.
Carbon credits are a ponzy scheme and our green infested government here in New Zealand are encouraging overseas investors to buy up sheep and cattle farms and plant in pine trees which will NEVER be harvested.
The theory is that these forests se-quest carbon rapidly to earn carbon credits and at some time in the future our native bush will take over .
The problem with the theory is that unattended pines on hill country will eventually die or blow or fall over and become a fire hazard .
If a land owner has signed up to earn carbon credits on their production forests they have to surrender 75% of them at harvest in New Zealand .
When these carbon forests burn the owners should surrender 100% of their credits.
But will they?
What advantage are these carbon forests to New Zealand? or to the world ? when they are reducing food and wool supplies to the world and then they burn?
They are destroying country districts as once the trees are planted there is no work in those areas but also so many other people rely on the work generated from these former farms .
Transport to and from the farms ,work in meat works and loading ships with produce .
All that will be produced off this land from now on will be CARBON CREDITS that the government will issue which will flow overseas.
Finally even the UN states in the Paris Agreement on Climate change.
Artical 2 b
Countries should adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change in a manner that does not threaten FOOD Production.

6
DMacKenzie
Reply to  Graham
May 28, 2023 2:33 pm

If you do it right, yeah “net zero” except for the first cutting. But the majority of cut forest on planet earth becomes pasture land and farmland, and has been thus since the invention of agriculture, some 8K years ago. Here forests are cut, companies have to replant trees, but 20 years later what was once forest is just rocky ground with some scrub brush.

0
spetzer86
May 27, 2023 5:22 am

So all the people that gave these clowns money for offsets now have to give more money to other grifters to make up for the activities these clowns didn’t do?

11
aaron
May 27, 2023 5:26 am

It is unlikely carbon credit schemes have any impact on global carbon dioxide uptake, they likely just steal carbon from another part of the natural environment or some poor subsistence farmer.

We have grown the biosphere by more than 50Gt C since the 60s. While we consumed some of it and released CO2 as our portion of the biosphere increased until the 1960s, when we began releasing more significant amount of CO2 through fossil fuel’s our portion the biosphere began shrinking. As of late, we are now adding to the biosphere more than all we have taken away. And our portion of the biosphere has shrunk substantially.

We’ve now grown the biosphere, since the 1960s, by far more than the portion we take up/consume.

All crops only make up about 10Gt C of the land biosphere. https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115

Graph by Robert Rohde, based on data from 2022 Carbon Budget. https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/

386B9CCD-627C-411F-89E8-37428FFF4572.jpeg
Last edited 3 days ago by aaron
0
Josh Scandlen
May 27, 2023 5:50 am

There was another “carbon offset” investment company out of North Carolina, which I can’t remember the name of.

Anyway, in the irony of all ironies, the founder died when his plane crashed. Can’t be “green” and fly.

6
John Hultquist
Reply to  Josh Scandlen
May 27, 2023 8:34 am

 Hunter Parks, 45, one of those killed in the crash, was the founder and chairman of Green Assets.

2
bnice2000
Reply to  John Hultquist
May 27, 2023 2:10 pm

“Green Assets.”

Ahh.. but what colour were the seats in his plane ?

2
Marty
May 27, 2023 6:23 am

I suspect it isn’t just the carbon off-sets that are a fraud. I get the impression that when you get away from the churches that most of the secular charities and foundations are useless and wasteful at best and fraudulent at worst.

7
Mantis
Reply to  Marty
May 27, 2023 11:37 am

Agreed. Unless you are feeding, housing, clothing, or educating (not indoctrinating) poor people, then your “charity” is more likely about feeding your own delusions of self righteousness and/or pushing your own political beliefs.

4
mleskovarsocalrrcom
May 27, 2023 7:59 am

“Carbon credits/offsets” are the new tulips.

3
Brian Catt
May 27, 2023 8:19 am

For those not familiar with Dr Shiva, here is his take down of the carbon trading rackets the UN IPCC exists to enable, as well as transfer of wealth and power from the West to Asia. This is a blatant fraud trading worthless pieces if paper for nice margins at public expense, entirely created by fraudulent climate laws. And now, Dr, Shiva will explain how……

4
ResourceGuy
May 27, 2023 9:00 am

Not surprised about Disney. Corporate arrogance is rampant these days along with zero due diligence on eco and social flag planting.

3
doonman
May 27, 2023 10:19 am

I didn’t drink any beer last night which prevented carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere. I also didn’t get up to go pee and so I didn’t turn on the light and wastewater was not pumped or treated. Where are my carbon credits?

7
tinny
May 27, 2023 12:01 pm

Ooh goody.
I bought some Shell petrol recently.
Can I have some reparations please?

2
Matthew W
May 28, 2023 6:13 am

Of course there is fraud with a taxpayer funded subsidy !!!
But regardless, CO2 was not affected……..

0
kalsel3294
May 28, 2023 8:22 am

If a football player kicks a goal for the opposing team, obviously his own team cannot claim the goal, but can the goal be credited to his goal kicking record?
Now hold that thought.
If an Australian farmer creates carbon credits and then sells them to an overseas company, doesn’t that then mean that the carbon credits the farmer produced can no longer be credited to the Australian carbon emissions reduction tally?

0
Graham
Reply to  kalsel3294
May 28, 2023 2:32 pm

I would agree with you kalset but as I have written above our ” green”’ infested government is encouraging companies from out side of New Zealand to buy up good farmland and plant it in carbon forests.
Our dumb government then issue carbon credits as the pine trees grow which flow overseas so that foreign companies can use them to tell their shareholders and customers that they are
“CARBON NEUTRAL”
I can not see how these carbon credits can count as New Zealands when some bureaucrat is quantifying our countries emissions when these carbon credits are counted again overseas.
Does any one here know the answer ?

1
kalsel3294
Reply to  Graham
May 28, 2023 4:23 pm

Some time back one of the rural papers here did a story on a large farm that had accrued considerable carbon credits and then sold them overseas for $500,000 to Microsoft. I wrote to my local politician asking precisely that question but never got a response, I think I will try again, perhaps I should try and catch him in his office and put it to him directly.
Given the vagaries of nature a change in conditions could see that the sale of such carbon credits may become a liability that requires them to compensate the buyer if there is a loss of soil carbon rather than a sustainable gain.

0
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