SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Libby Blanchard is an affiliated research scholar with the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute. Kathleen McAfee is a professor teaching global environmental policy at San Francisco State University. They wrote this op-ed piece for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The environmental risks of endorsing tropical forest carbon offsets are enormous,” they wrote. “If they’re implemented through California’s regulations, such offsets would offer dirty industries another way to continue to pollute or even increase pollution beyond their limits under the state’s cap-and-trade system. By allowing big polluters to carry on business as usual, carbon offsets delay the clean-energy transformation we urgently need.”