In January 2020, Microsoft announced that it “will be carbon negative by 2030”. The news was repeated widely and largely uncritically, although Greenpeace’s Elizabeth Jardim pointed out to BBC News that, “a gaping hole remains unaddressed: Microsoft’s expanding efforts to help fossil fuel companies drill more oil and gas with machine-learning and other AI technologies”.
Category: USA
For an economics that takes the climate science seriously
In 2018, the economist William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in Economics. The prize was awarded to Nordhaus for “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.”
California approves the Tropical Forest Standard. Good news for the fossil fuel industry. Bad news for the climate crisis
On 19 September 2019, the California Air Resources Board voted 7-4 to approve the Tropical Forest Standard. CARB is determined to convince us that this is not an approval of REDD offsets in California’s cap-and-trade scheme. In a presentation about the Tropical Forest Standard CARB staff point out that, “Endorsement of the Standard Does Not…
Carbon Confidential: A California Crime Caper
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) is set to consider an updated Tropical Forest Standard at a public meeting on 19 September 2019. CARB invited comments. Larry Lohmann of The Corner House sent in a comment that explores the “bottomless cesspit of intellectual corruption” that is today’s world of climate change politics:
Letter from California senator Bob Wieckowski: “I write to express our strong opposition to the Air Resources Board’s Tropical Forest Standard”
“The TFS [Tropical Forest Standard] approach risks producing a landslide of false credits due to the challenges with ensuring credited reductions are permanent, non-leaking, and additional, and the inherent possibility that other jurisdictions buying and selling TFS credits will interpret the TFS’ protections liberally. California should not lend its name to these efforts nor commit…