#communities and CHILDREN and incalculable loss. and to see that being used for jokes or snarky comments or put downs??? it makes me irate | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sohinitheexplorer · 1 year

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Making a meme out of serious sentiments

Anthropogenic climate change and its devastating effects on the planet are empirical facts (IPCC, 2022) about us human beings. Climate scientist, environmentalists, indigenous community and people who care are taking this situation very seriously because they cannot ignore the blatant truth anymore, it’s writings on the wall with forest fires, oceans rising, multiple species extinction, pandemics and other catastrophes. To make matters worse majority governing bodies of the world are not taking these factual inputs as seriously as they should because it’s somehow “profitable” for them (Morton, 2022). I don’t even think this is an intelligent move to be honest, you have to be cognitively impaired to manifest this deplorable situation into reality. So today I will talk about the philosophy of Carbon Credits and it’s glaring flaws.

Carbon Credits are documents which can certify the allowance of how much carbon is supposed to be emitted by a particular industry and these documents can be traded in the market according to market’s supply and demand situation (Kenton, 2019). This is supposed to incentivize major carbon polluter industries to cut back at their emissions. However, the major problems associated with this temporary solution policy are:

1) The documents I referred to earlier, they are way cheaper for a firm to buy than make a significant change in the production process. Now the cost in USA is $3.20/tonne of carbon emission (Climate Trade, 2022). According to the economist, for real change to happen the cost should be $100-150/tonne (Economist, how do carbon markets work? 2021 and Why Carbon Credits and Offsets Will Not Work, 2021). In simple terms instead of solving the problem they are trying to throw money on it and that leads to our second problem.

2) “These changes have not only saved them money, but have also created carbon credits, which can be sold for huge profits. As an example, a company in China spent 5 million to build an energy-producing incinerator, which generated 500 million dollars of excessive profit through carbon credits. While rewarding carbon-reducing technologies makes sense, a 495-million-dollar profit is over the top!” (Why Carbon Credits and Offsets Will Not Work, 2021)

3) It gave birth to a whole new green washing industry that will reduce carbon emission on behalf of the companies by planting new trees called carbon offsetting, not even considering the fact that with carbon emission there also a huge depletion of fossil fuels and planting trees will never solve that (Childs and Zylva, 2021).

4) The real threat of establishing production part of the industry offshore where there are less strict laws and cheap labor…a perfect situation for profit and incalculable loss of the local community and ecology and by extension the earth. (Economist, how do carbon markets work? 2021) because the pollution is still taking place and the emission levels are ever rising.

my question is, why are we still not seeing this rampant misuse of laws and regulations as a punishable offense. Why are we not holding these industries and by extension these governing bodies accountable for the crimes they have committed against our ecology. Instead of penalizing these industries we are incentivizing/encouraging them to be less problematic which we are sure they are not motivated to do so…as if they are some kindergarten children whole need a standing ovation for doing something bare minimum. We don’t need to infantilize these technocrats for anything…they are slowly digging our graves. According to google “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations”.

Unfortunately ontologically speaking, the people that largely have a control over our lives are making a joke…a meme out of our helpless situation. And it’s not even funny. IT NEVER WAS.

Refferences:

• IPCC, 2022. Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, in press. • Morton, A. (2022) Australia’s carbon credit scheme ‘largely a sham’, says whistleblower who tried to rein it in, the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/23/australias-carbon-credit-scheme-largely-a-sham-says-whistleblower-who-tried-to-rein-it-in. • Kenton, W. (2019) Carbon Credit, Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/carbon_credit.asp. • Climate Trade (2022) What influences carbon offset pricing?, Climate Trade. Available at: https://climatetrade.com/what-influences-carbon-offset-pricing/#:~:text=Carbon%20credit%20supply%20and%20demand&text=According%20to%20the%20authors%2C%20global (Accessed: 7 November 2022). • The Economist, How do carbon markets work? (2021) www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ych9oDtk0&t=1s&ab_channel=TheEconomist (Accessed: 7 November 2022). • Why Carbon Credits and Offsets Will Not Work (2021) Forestecologynetwork.org. Available at: http://www.forestecologynetwork.org/climate_change/credits_%26_offsets.html. • Mike Childs and Paul de Zylva, 2021, A dangerous distraction – the offsetting con | Policy and insight policy.friendsoftheearth.uk. Available at: https://policy.friendsoftheearth.uk/insight/dangerous-distraction-offsetting-con.

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