In the name of climate action, California pushed the world toward electric cars. But building enough of them is creating its own environmental crises.“We have documented over $400 million worth of credits issued that we think don’t help the climate,” said Danny Cullenward, a lecturer at Stanford and policy director of CarbonPlan, the nonprofit research group created by the scientists.
The problem with the deal, Canham said, is that the land was already preserved by a local foundation and being managed in a way that would soak up carbon. “We are paying landowners to keep doing what they were already doing,” he said. “People are being unrealistic in claiming this will increase the magnitude of the nation’s carbon sink.”
Because the burned trees in the Eddie Ranch project wouldn’t actually absorb carbon, California had to backfill now-worthless offsets — by making a large withdrawal from a state carbon credit insurance fund called the “buffer pool.” Landowners pay some credits into the fund when they sell offset credits to polluters.
“The judge said to the plaintiffs, ‘You want the Air Resources Board to go out and put a lie detector on every developer and ask them were you ever going to harvest this land?’” said Sahota. “That is not practical.” The Air Resources Board has potent and sympathetic allies in its crusade for the status quo. Land trusts, conservation groups and Indian tribes across the country are heavily invested in a climate action program that has essentially spawned its own economy. Some $2 billion flowed from offset credits over the last eight years, funding educational programs, opioid addiction clinics and cash payments to tribal members, among other things.
The offsets are an obscure concept to most Californians, but in this neighborhood where residents report shutting themselves inside their homes to avoid the smell of the refinery and cope with rampant asthma and bronchial infections, the topic is familiar.
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