From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Article 6.4 apparently rejects machine based carbon sequestration in favour of poor nation carbon reserves, which have a hideous baggage of human rights violations.

Which Deserves a Carbon Credit – Nature or Technology?

ByJennifer L
June 5, 2023

The United Nations (UN) has drafted a document that will define a new global carbon market for years to come, which seems to favor nature-based solutions over technological or engineered carbon removals.

The UN panel casts doubt on the promise of using machines to remove CO2 and tackle the climate crisis. This is sending shock waves through the rising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) industry, which scientists said is critical to reduce global warming. 

The high-profile group shots a simple yet baffling question: nature vs. technology – which deserves a carbon credit?

Carbon Removals Don’t Serve Paris’ Article 6.4?

The Biden administration has started pumping billions of dollars into carbon removal solutions to help establish the CDR industry in the U.S. Large companies across sectors have also been betting their money in this emerging industry. The likes of Apple, Microsoft, Stripe, and even JPMorgan have invested hundreds of millions in carbon removal credits. 

But the UN panel appears to prefer the natural ways of capturing CO2. The group is questioning the technical and economic viability of startups seeking to remove carbon that’s already in the atmosphere. In their note, the panel wrote:

“Engineering-based removal activities are technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks. These activities do not contribute to sustainable development, are not suitable for implementation in the developing countries and do not contribute to reducing the global mitigation costs.”

In short, they believe that CDR solutions are not serving any of the goals of the Article 6.4 provision. 

A Global Carbon Trading System

The Paris Agreement on climate change contains a specific provision calling for the creation of an international carbon trading program. It’s officially referred to as Article 6.4.

…Read more: https://carboncredits.com/un-slams-carbon-removals-favors-nature-based-solutions/

Removing CO2 from the air by natural or artificial means is an absurd and damaging waste of resources. CO2 is plant food – we need more CO2, not less, to feed the billions of people who still go to bed hungry every night.

But discriminating against some forms of carbon removal is an even greater absurdity, and in my opinion betrays a deeper agenda.

If rich countries earn carbon credits from removal and sequestration machines, there is no opportunity for the kleptocrats who run poor countries to help themselves to rich country tax money.

Natural carbon credits offer far more opportunities to the Wabenzi. All they have to do is commit a few war crimes, massacres, mass rapes and human rights atrocities, maybe do a little ethnic cleansing, and they have a pristine carbon credit forest, which can earn substantial sums of hard currency just by existing.

And if a few locals start logging the forest, the Wabenzi can either ignore the carbon credit violations, or send in a carbon credit funded militia armed with machine guns, grenades and rocket launchers to brutalise and clear out the native intruders, from lands they once thought were their homes.

One day history will look back on this hideous period of neo-colonial carbon exploitation, and wonder why nobody did anything to stop it. I doubt future historians will find explanations which make any kind of sense. I certainly don’t have any kind of reasonable answer to that question, other than money, greed and opportunity.

Maybe I’m wrong, and the UN just don’t like machines. But whatever their thinking, the consequences of this interpretation of the Paris Agreement are just as dire, for anyone who gets in the way of poor nation kleptocrats making a little carbon sequestration cash.