I noted the Guardian reporting this week that:
Adverts that claim products are carbon neutral using offsets are to be banned by the UK's advertising watchdog unless companies can prove they really work, the Guardian can reveal, as Gucci becomes the latest company to struggle with a high-profile environmental commitment based on offsetting.
I am pleased to note this move. Firstly, that's because I have long thought most claims about carbon offsetting are pure greenwash.
Second, this is because the viability of most carbon offsetting claims is so implausible. For example, it has been suggested that if Shell was to offset its emissions it would need to plant trees over the whole of India, and that is not going to happen.
Third, the whole claim seems to be an excuse for continuing to emit and to make no real changes to business behaviour.
The ASA is now demanding proof before the claim can be made. When a couple of years ago I included the same requirement in sustainable cost accounting I was told my suggestion was absurd and I could not possibly propose this. Now regulators are realising how spurious carbon offset claims are. My suggestion stands in that case.
The case for offsetting does not. We need real change in behaviour, not excuses for inaction.
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‘Carbon Offsetting’ – a hallucination by the AI known as ‘Neo-liberalism’.
Come on Pilgrim, AI known as Neoliberalism? Surely you mean AE (Artificial Entity).
No intelligence involved at all.
Tom
Never underestimate the cunning of unreason.
PSR
You argument seems to be that if there were an ‘India’ available and we could plant trees on it, then that would indeed offset the CO2 of Shell.
This has to be false.
The people doing the calculation are saying look at the CO2 being captured because of us turning up in off road vehicles and planting seedlings with their plastic bark protectors. They are not subtracting the CO2 that would be captured by whatever would grew without the intervention. In many habitats grasses left alone are great CO2 absorbers and depositors of organic matter into the soil, but over time they get outcompeted by trees that may be less efficient CO2 absorbers but can shade out the light from their competition.
The best strategy would be to let unproductive farmland go to the wall and then get out of the way.
And ban the breeding of new dogs, working dogs excepted.
I produced monthly reports for a G7 government on EU action on renewables and climate actions from 2008 through to 2016. The Clean development Mechanism (CDM) was/is a mech to incentivise CO2/GHG reductions via “market mechanisms”. Right for the start it was a target for a large number of crooks. It had zero impact and from around 2011 onwards there was massive criticism.
In the same way, in 2009 I discussed with a European Commission official responsible for the EUs Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) the problems with that scheme (dreamt up by Gordon Brown as a “market mechanism” for reducing CO2). She admitted that it was having no impact on CO2 emissions (Vattenfall said the same in 2016) and that member state renewable subsidy schemes were responsible for most emission reductions.
Two market-based schemes to reduce CO2 emissions – both complete and total failures. EU ETS supporters (mostly ETS traders and Commission officials that have used the ETS to further their careeers) still make the mistake in thinking high CO2 prices (EUAs) is a sign of success. Nope.
Carbon-off-sets fall into the same category as the above stupid schemes. They are a combo of a con-trip and ponzi-scheme, they allow stupid companies like Gucci to box-tick their CSR compliance – Pathetic squared: pathetic company and a pathetic Co2 reduction scheme.
I disagree with Dieter Helm on much to do with power systems, but on CO2 reduction he is dead right: taxing CO2 emissions works (econometrically efficient) anything else is “lets pretend” – the fact that EU politicos and Brown did not have the balls/courage/brains to take the tax route is a reflection of how weak/stupid/supine the 1990s crop of politicos were, ditto the rabble that followed them – nutless, gutless, brainless.
Your sustainable cost methodology would have bankrupt every single business one the planet..i’m sure thats not what the ASA have in mind!!
It would bankrupt none
It might point out they are bankrupt
It you who is in denial of reality
Accounting should not be
Right now we are on track to ‘bankrupt’ the planet and those who live on it. All Richard is doing is pointing out through sustainable cost accounting that the way most businesses are being run will inevitably lead to that disastrous result.
Sticking heads in the sand and just concentrating on making as much money as possible for as long as possible is morally reprehensible.
Meanwhile, the owners of Vauxhall have made statements that threaten the future of Ellesmere Port vehicle production. The issue is the lack of Government action to ensure large scale battery production for the motor industry. Notice, the “market” isn’t going to deliver it. Only Government strategy, backed by investment and action will deliver.
At almost the same time as an urgent question on the issue in Parliament dragged a junior minister nobody knew existed to defend the Government doing nothing; the Chancellor was delivering his 5-point industrial strategy for the UK to a Select Committee. The 5-points are “Digital Technology, Green Industries, Life Sciences, Advanced Manufacturing and Creative Industries”.
There are two big problems with this: first, it is possible but not necessary that battery production is captured by ‘Advanced Manufacturing’, but the statement of concern over Vauxhall’s future by Stellantis N.V (owner of Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citreon, Fiat and Chrysler – the 4th largest motor manufacturer in the world), means that either battery manufacture isn’t in ‘Advanced Manufacturing’, or the Government has failed to deliver; and the ‘5-point strategy’ is simply more hot air and PR spin with no substance. In this tussle Vauxhall is ‘small beer’ to Stellantis in the global automobile market; what leverage do you think the Government has if it fails to deliver here?
So I turned to the Government website to check, here: (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/industrial-strategy-the-foundations/industrial-strategy-the-5-foundations). All the website shows is the 2017 Industrial Strategy, “withdrawn 1st March, 2023”; and a link to the ‘Plan for Growth’, 3rd March, 2021; with a Foreward – by Boris Johnson. That’s it. This is where we are. Nowhere.
And there, readers is a summary of Britain’s present state of Industrial Strategy and planning for growth; even the Government spin-machine cannot produce a plausible looking fake policy to mislead the public. There is nothing there.
Don’t for one minute think electric cars are carbon neutral, far far from
it. So none could be manufactured anyway under richards sustainable accounting methodology… in fact the challenge is to think of one single business which could survive!!
If business cannot adapt we cannot survive is the message you’re delivering
It’s not my methodology that will kill business
What you recognise is business is killing us
Paul, I am not sure you quite caught the crux of my comment.
So be it, but I wish I believed the committed on these lofty, grand strategy global issues are looking for workable solutions that will take us from where we are, optimise the timescale required to arrive where we require to be; but without throwing much of the working population, and the functioning productive economy immediately “under the bus” (if I may revert to the vernacular) .
Supertankers have a smaller turning circle than the problems with which we are imminently faced. We need thinking that genuinely wishes to match the scale of the problem; not more grandstanding or Holy Script. As a CEO used to say to me if I brought him what I at least thought was a shrewd, well argued, decisive deconstruction of whatever proposal he had asked me to review; he would hand it back to me and say; bring me solutions John, not just the problems.
Well just be upfront Richard and spell it out.. we have to stop all motorised travel, the transportation of goods and services, stop the construction, manufacture and transmission of pretty much anything and basically consume what we can farm in our immediate community. We should ban all pets and impose very restrictive birth control. And all of this is scratching surface and is the bare minimum needed to survive according to your rationale. And presumably this is at the top of your agenda and so renders all discussion about economic growth, employment or leisure or anything else as absolutely meaningless. And we need this implemented in all corners of the world asap. Why don’t you speak of the consequences of your thinking???
This is not true
So shall we ‘cut the crap?’
John Warren points out the state of government strategy – i.e. zero, in the real world. But surely, the point of Sunak and Co is to maintain the facade while ripping off the country AND putting it beyond any simple repair (with the trade agreements and the development of the freeports/privatised zones?
(Which does beg the question aired on here, what then is Labour for? Why isn’t Starmer screaming out the dangers?)
It’ll all be moot shortly if the 1.5 degree change by 2027 turns out to be true.
My son works in Detroit dealing at top level with a global car maker. I also sit on a working group that includes and gets input from industry, SME’s as well as majors. Based on what they are saying, the motor industry, between Brexit and the government’s policies, looks to have next to no future in the UK. Everything that was done to rebuild it over the last 20-30 years has been trashed. There are no good reasons for any serious manufacturer now to base themselves in the UK. I fear the same will apply to other critical sectors.
We have a government that has little or no understanding or interest in taking the actions needed. What actions they are taking are tactical and trivial (eg batteries), or merely play to their ideology (leave it to the market) and favour their mates (eg Freeport’s and Teeside).
It’s another open goal for Labour and the opposition. They should be crucifying the government and its minsters. The usual assumptions that ‘business’ supports Conservatives have been undermined. The City still does but they should not be confused or conflated with the wider business community.