The moral conundrum of carbon credits

Marketplace All-in-One

Marketplace

News, Business

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many of the world’s largest companies are setting net-zero climate goals, and they’re using carbon credits to get there. That means they can keep producing carbon emissions as long as they pay for emissions to be reduced elsewhere.

But do carbon credits actually incentivize companies to reduce their emissions?

On the show today, Pedro Martins Barata, associate vice president for carbon markets at the Environmental Defense Fund, explains what carbon credits are and the ethical concerns with companies relying on them to meet net-zero emissions goals. Plus, what future regulation of carbon markets could look like.

Then, we’ll unpack the good and bad news in the latest U.S. climate assessment. And, some industries are compensating for widespread staffing shortages by requiring employees to work excessive overtime.

Later, we’ll hear about how some farmers are combating climate change. And, this week’s answer to the Make Me Smart question was inspired by a listener.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “Fossil-fuel company net zero plans ‘largely meaningless,’ report says” from Reuters

- “Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’” from The Guardian

- “The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tons of CO2 Into the Atmosphere” from ProPublica

- “Analysis: How some of the world’s largest companies rely on carbon offsets to ‘reach net-zero’” from Carbon Brief

- “Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation” from Science

- “Carbon offsets: What are they and do they work?” from CNN Business

- “36-hour shifts, 80-hour weeks: Workers are being burned out by overtime” from NBC News

- “US climate assessment lays out growing threats, opportunities as temperatures rise” from Reuters

- “Farm fields don’t just feed us. They store carbon. But a big question is how much” from AP News

We want to hear your answer to the Make Me Smart question. You can reach us at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart where none of us is as smart as all of us.
0:12.0	Kai is out today, but joining me is Marketplace's Nova Zephra.
0:17.0	Kimberly Adams, it's really good to be here with you.
0:19.0	It's Tuesday, November 14th, and we're going to deep dive today.
0:24.1	I'm excited to be digging into today's topic, carbon credits.
0:28.5	Yes, I know.
0:29.5	So this is part of our ongoing climate series, which, as I'm sure those of you who regularly
0:34.1	listen thank you very much have heard many of the world's biggest companies
0:39.3	have been setting net zero climate goals in recent years and they're using carbon credits often to get there.
0:47.6	But we want to know how these carbon credits actually work and whether they're actually an effective tool to fight climate change.
0:55.8	So here to make us smart about this is Pedro Martinez Barata.
0:59.8	He is the Associate Vice President for Carbon Markets
1:03.0	and Private Sector Decarbonization
1:06.0	at the Environmental Defense Fund.
1:08.2	Welcome to the show.
1:09.6	Thank you.
1:10.4	Great.
1:11.8	So let's start with the very obvious question. What are carbon credits exactly?
1:17.0	So carbon credits essentially, let's take this example.
1:22.0	I'm a consultant here in Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal, where I'm calling from,
1:28.0	and I want to compensate my footprint, my carbon footprint, because I've been doing a lot of travel these last few weeks
1:35.3	and one way of doing it could be that I pay somebody else to reduce their emissions.
	...

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