Don’t change much, but still become “climate neutral”? On paper, this has been possible for a long time. Long-distance travel, parcel services, and entire production facilities can shed their emissions backpacks almost overnight. Companies invest in the protection or reforestation of forests, buy the relevant certificates and thus underestimate their own climate damage. Such things are well received by many customers, so it also helps the business. Whether it really helps the climate is another question.
Two studies have looked into this, they don’t cast a good light on an already questionable business. One comes to the conclusion that the benefits of such projects are almost always overestimated. The other assumes that the reforestation of tropical forests will be less and less profitable in view of rising temperatures – simply because trees grow less in warmer climates, so they also store less carbon. This climate protection with the slide rule, nothing else is the compensation in the forest, is also based on embellished numbers.
Compensation gives companies the license to carry on as before
The idea itself sounds charming. Forests are a natural counterbalance to fossil emissions. They can bind carbon dioxide, even permanently: if the wood is not burned afterwards but used as a building material. What’s more, whoever protects forests also protects their biodiversity. That’s the theory.
In practice, a billion-dollar market has long since emerged, but this often does not protect against deforestation. Certificates often come from patches of forest that are on impassable terrain, so there is no other way to use them anyway – allegedly avoided clearings that were never planned are sold here. And none of these certificates can prevent the nearest usable piece of forest from being cleared and converted into a plantation. Or that where yesterday there was a forest, cattle are grazing today. And also that to satisfy needs in the rich part of the world.
The companies there, however, get the so-called offsetting of emissions the license to carry on as before. To the extent that they acquire forest certificates, they can continue to operate fossil fuel business models carefree – and even “climate-neutral” on paper. Too bad that every liter of oil and every cubic meter of gas they burn is irretrievably gone. On the other hand, no one knows what will happen to the forests in the long term, which are supposed to compensate for this. A forest fire can destroy all compensation. And who can permanently check that a corner is not being cleared after all.
The compensation deal promises climate protection, but often it is not. It gives companies a green cloak and their customers the necessary well-being. But it doesn’t change much. If things go really badly, the bottom line is that after all the calculations, there are more emissions than before.
On the other hand, if companies want to build up a real credit in climate protection, then they don’t have to reduce emissions on paper, but actually – for example by investing in renewable energies and in processes that consume less energy. It may be more complex and expensive, but at least it delivers what it promises. And yes, there is nothing to prevent companies and states from working to protect tropical forests. But please not so that we can continue to overexploit the climate without any worries.