Offsetting isn’t working

Many of you will read the news last week that 90% of rainforest carbon offsets have been deemed by an independent investigation to have a negligible or harmful impact.

In recent years carbon credits have been used to compensate for many companies' emissions. We ourselves have explored this extensively. If only it was that simple. There is no magic wand when it comes to the climate. It's time we all focussed on avoidance, reduction, and removal (in this order).

I personally hope this doesn't bring an end to the industry and that a much tighter more regulated and universally adopted system is born out of this scandal.

A carbon credit system, and crucially carbon taxation, can play an important role in lowering our emissions but we also mustn't lose sight of the main goal which should be to avoid and reduce carbon emissions in the first place.