Dear Richard
You make the following statement: “if your really trying to lower atmospheric CO2 levels, then you have to start with the easiest tasks first”.
While I can identify no logical basis for such an approach (it’s just, as you say, “easier”, but likely indicative that we are not “really trying”), lets assume for now that I agree with you.
The question is, what is really easier – accurately monitoring the reduction of emissions from hundreds of millions of hectares of vastly differing ecosystems across an array of counties with differing legal and governance systems, often plagued by corruption, weak capacity, and unreliable judiciaries – or monitoring emissions reductions from those relatively few industrialized countries that generate the most emissions from a relatively consolidated and easily identifiable emissions generating infrastructure?
I think the latter is easier and more reliable, and that the only thing making it hard is political and financial resistance from the types of major polluters your business model will help continue polluting.

I hope you agree that accurately and scientifically monitoring actual emissions reductions is essential for the forest carbon trade you are advocating being deemed “credible”, both ecologically and financially. However, I am not sure you do. As you are quoted as saying in an article on your website, the forestry you have taught yourself is “more art than science”.

I ask you two questions:
1. Do you or anyone in your company know what volume of emissions reductions are required globally to ensure the predictable ongoing viability of forests, and therefore the predictable viability of REDD as a reliable mitigation lever? (references please)
2. On what basis are you confident, if indeed you are, that the world will agree and implement a climate deal that will provide that level of required emissions reductions?

I will interpret your answers as indicative of your confidence that your business model is sustainably footed on terra-firma, so to speak.

Thanks for your insight on these matters.

Re Monbiots estimate of 5% . . .

As I wrote in the previous comment: “Please don’t just read this conclusion and respond to that. In his article, Monbiot explains in detail why greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced in Annex 1 countries quickly and dramatically.”

not really, for example, if all possible emissions from land-use malpractice were halted, CO2e emissions would be reduced by a third to a half.

Yes, but see Robin’s response above. And if we trade carbon credits generated from the reduction in emissions from land-use, then the reduction in emissions is zero, because emissions continue somewhere else.

This is extremely significant in that it gives us some time to keep burning the fossil fuels that by any reasonable estimate we’ll probably keep burning anyway…for a while…wrong feeling as that may be.

That’s what’s wrong with offsets. They allow us to keep burning fossil fuels, when we have to start restructuring industry as quickly as possibly away from burning fossil fuels.

And yes, I do think we need to reduce industrial emissions, but, and here come some more controversy…because we need to be in a lower or no growth . sustainable economy eventually. For now, land use change still looks pretty good to me…

It seems that we agree on three things:

1. we need to reduce industrial emissions,
2. we need to reduce emissions from forests,
3. we need to move to a lower or zero growth economy.

Where we disagree is over the use of offsets. I think offsets are a bad idea because offsets allow industrial emissions and the current growth at all costs economy to continue. And because offsets shift the problem to somewhere else – there is an urgent need to address issues of climate justice. Offsets are asking the South to clean up the mess that we in the North created.

Offsets are a “Dangerous Distraction” as Friends of the Earth put it.

The five central arguments against offsetting, according to FoE, are that it:

1. counts action in developing countries as part of the cuts promised in developed countries, although the science is clear that action is needed in both developed and developing countries.
2. cannot guarantee the same cuts as would have happened without offsetting.
3. is causing major delays to urgently needed economic transformations in developed countries.
4. does not ensure positive sustainable development in, or appropriate financial transfers to, developing countries.
5. is profoundly unjust, fundamentally flawed and cannot be reformed.

Precisely. So smokestack emissions are allowed to continue, as they will be traded off against supposed REDD credits. In other words, we fail to make the transition to a low-carbon economy, climate change continues, and the planet goes to hell, including the world’s forests.

What exactly leads you to believe that land-use change is the “low hanging fruit”. If I am not mistaken, all the evidence of the last 40 years or so of development practice tends to prove precisely the opposite: getting people to change their land-use practices, especially when they depend on it for subsistence is incredibly difficult, takes time, and is very expensive. To say nothing of the fact that most of the governments of the countries in which tropical deforestation is taking place are up to their necks in corruption and dodgy deals with logging companies, palm oil companies, mining companies, pulp and paper companies, soya companies etc etc etc. How exactly are you going deal with those situations?

It’s clearly very easy to repeat the nostrums about “low hanging fruit” that have been trotted out by various observers, including Nicholas Stern, over the last few years. But does it not strike you as slightly odd that we think that changing the lifestyles of hundreds of millions of poor rural people in developing countries, and tackling widespread corruption, is going to be “lower hanging” than, say, banning large-engined cars, or requiring people to stop massively wasteful and profligate use of energy in the US and Europe?

Robin

I know that you have noted elsewhere on this site that you are a “nascent REDD projectier”, but one of the basics of the trade that you seem yet to have realised is that in order to do Amazon carbon credit trading, you have to trade *against* something.

What exactly do you think that ‘something’ is going to be?

Robin

Thanks for your comment. Do you agree that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? If so, do you agree that we need to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels? I would hope that your answer to both these questions is yes.

Now the tricky part. If carbon credits are generated from “avoided deforestation” they will be bought by companies or governments that will continue to burn fossil fuels and therefore to emit greenhouse gases. Carbon trading allows companies to delay the changes necessary to move away from burning fossil fuels.

Please read this article by George Monbiot which explains why carbon offsets cannot possibly address climate change. Monbiot’s conclusion is that

“Carbon offsetting makes sense if you are seeking a global cut of 5% between now and forever. It is the cheapest and quickest way of achieving an insignificant reduction. But as soon as you seek substantial cuts, it becomes an unfair, impossible nonsense, the equivalent of pulling yourself off the ground by your whiskers. Yes, let us help poorer nations to reduce deforestation and clean up pollution. But let us not pretend that it lets us off the hook.”

Please don’t just read this conclusion and respond to that. In his article, Monbiot explains in detail why greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced in Annex 1 countries quickly and dramatically.

Your final comment is extraordinary: “The desire to exact punishment against the evil-doers is a morality play best left on the trash heap of historically counterproductive ideas.” I’m really not sure what you mean by this. Taken literally, this statement would do away with any concepts of justice, law, governance or rights. I’m not sure what we have left – other than perhaps “the market”, that raging success that recently brought the global economy to its knees.