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carbon offsets
Keep the Turkey, Change the System
Changing your diet isn’t the only way to help tackle factory farming; instead, you can donate to charities working to make a difference.
Nov 27, 2025
As holiday dishes parade across dining tables nationwide, there’s one question we often try to avoid: Where did my food actually come from?
Every holiday season, Americans consume millions of turkeys, hams, and other festive fare. The uncomfortable reality is that about 99% of the meat in the US comes from factory farms: industrial facilities with crowded conditions, which pollute the environment and push traditional farms out of business.
But this isn’t what we want to think about when we’re celebrating. And we certainly don’t want to swap turkey for tofu.
Here’s the good news: Changing your diet isn’t the only way to help tackle factory farming, and it probably isn’t even the best way. Instead, you can keep eating meat and donate to "offset" your impact. Think of carbon offsets, not just for the climate, but for animal welfare as well.
The meat industry would love us to debate individual food choices endlessly rather than examine the system they’ve created.
This is because some of the charities working to change factory farming are so good at what they do that it really doesn’t cost much to make a big difference. In fact, it would cost the average American about $23 a month to do as much good for animals and the planet as going vegan. Even with all the trimmings, Thanksgiving dinner costs you less than a dollar to offset.
Despite campaigns like Meatless Mondays and Veganuary, meat eating is still on the rise globally. About 5% of US adults identify as vegan or vegetarian, and for years that number has remained stagnant. The "diet change strategy" just isn’t moving us in the right direction.
On the other hand, charities have made huge gains in improving the lives of farm animals and pushing for a more sustainable food system. Groups such as The Humane League, or THL, have pressured major food companies to eliminate cruel practices, like confining egg-laying hens in cages too small to spread their wings. Thanks to THL and others, 40% of US hens are now cage-free, up from just 4% when they started.
But is it hypocritical to keep eating meat and pay a bit of money to feel less guilty?
Not necessarily, if the goal is to make a genuine difference.
In fact, emphasis on individual action has often held movements back. In the early 2000s, one of the biggest promoters of the "carbon footprint"—the idea of measuring and reducing your personal impact on global warming—was the oil giant BP. Shifting the focus from the role of big business to consumer choice plays into the hands of the world’s biggest polluters. In the same way, the meat industry would love us to debate individual food choices endlessly rather than examine the system they’ve created.
Instead, we need systemic change: supporting organizations that push for better regulations, fighting harmful agricultural subsidies, and holding companies accountable for their practices.
Most importantly, writing a check is a much easier ask than changing your entire diet, which means more people will actually help. We know people are willing to give their money to animal causes: About 12% of Americans do it, more than twice as many people as are vegetarian or vegan.
Right now, billions of animals are suffering in factory farms while we argue about what’s on our plates. The fastest path to ending their suffering isn’t waiting for everyone to go vegan: It just needs enough of us to put our money where our mouth is.
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As Historic Heatwave Grips Europe, Coalition Says 'No to a Climate Law for Polluters'
"Will the European Commission propose a climate law that ends fossil fuel use and reflects the E.U.'s fair share of climate responsibility? Or will it choose political convenience?"
Jun 30, 2025
As yet another dangerous heatwave pushes temperatures well into the triple digits across much of Europe, climate defenders on Monday renewed calls for stronger action to combat the planetary emergency—including by ensuring that the impending European Climate Law ends fossil fuel use and eschews false solutions including international carbon offsetting.
Croatia, France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain are among the countries where near- or record-high temperatures have been recorded. Portugal and Spain both recorded their hottest-ever June days over the weekend. El Granado in southwestern Spain saw the mercury soar to nearly 115°C (46°C) on Saturday. The heatwave is expected to continue into the middle of the week, with authorities warning of elevated wildfire risk and potential severe health impacts.
" Extreme heat is no longer a rare event—it has become the new normal," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Sunday on social media. "I'm experiencing it firsthand in Spain during the Financing for Development Conference. The planet is getting hotter and more dangerous—no country is immune. We need more ambitious #ClimateAction now."
On Monday, Real Zero Europe—"a campaign calling on the European Union to deliver real emissions reductions and real solutions to the climate crisis, instead of corporate greenwashed 'net zero' targets"—published a call for an E.U. Climate Law that does not contain provisions for international carbon offsetting, in which countries or corporations compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by funding projects that reduce emissions in other nations.
🔴 OUT NOW📢 69 NGOs call on the EU to deliver a Climate Law that rejects international carbon offsetting & Carbon Dioxide Removals (#CDR), commits to a full fossil fuel phase-out, and reflects Europe’s fair share of climate responsibility!Read the statement👇www.realzeroeurope.org/resources/st...
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— Real Zero Europe (@realzeroeurope.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 2:40 AM
A draft proposal of the legislation published Monday by Politico revealed that the European Commission will allow E.U. member states to outsource climate efforts to Global South nations staring in 2036, despite opposition from the 27-nation bloc's independent scientific advisory board. The outsourcing will enable the E.U. to fund emissions-reducing projects in developing nations and apply those reductions to Europe's own 2040 target—which is a 90% net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.
The proposal also embraces carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies like carbon capture and storage, whose scalability is unproven. Climate groups call them false solutions that prolong the fossil fuel era.
"E.U. climate policy stands at a crossroads: Will the European Commission propose a climate law that ends fossil fuel use and reflects the E.U.'s fair share of climate responsibility?" the Real Zero Europe letter says. "Or will it choose political convenience—abandoning that goal under pressure from corporate and populist interests, and turning to risky, unjust carbon offsetting and other false solutions?"
"Taking responsibility for the E.U.'s past and present role in causing the climate crisis means doubling down on a just and full fossil fuel phaseout not hiding behind false solutions as currently proposed," the letter continues. "The law as planned will send a dangerous signal far beyond E.U. borders. The climate and biodiversity crises are already harming people, especially vulnerable communities and populations largely in the Global South, who have least contributed to the climate crisis."
The 69 groups stress that international carbon offsetting "is a smokescreen for giving license to fossil fuel use beyond 2050" that diverts critical resources and public funds from real climate solutions and climate finance."
"Given the scale of climate catastrophe, for the E.U. to allow international offsets and technological CDR gives a lifeline to polluting industries such as the fossil fuel, agribusiness, plastics, and petrochemical industries," the letter states.
"We say no to an E.U. Climate Law that puts polluting industries over people and climate by embracing the use of international offsets and CDR approaches," the letter's signers said. "We call on the Commission to deliver an E.U. Climate Law and its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the U.N. climate negotiations that clearly reflects the bloc's responsibility for the climate crisis. That means a full fossil fuel phaseout and a just transition."
This heatwave is brutal. Temperatures above 40°C in June across France, Spain, Italy...We still hear from right-wing politicians that “it’s just summer.” It’s not. This is the climate crisis courtesy of the fossil fuels industry. It’s not normal.
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— European Greens (@europeangreens.eu) June 30, 2025 at 7:01 AM
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also addressed the European heatwave on Monday, saying that "the climate crisis is a human rights crisis."
"Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more," he continued. "The heatwave we are currently experiencing here shows us the importance of adaptation measures, without which human rights would be severely impacted."
"It is equally clear that our current production and consumption patterns are unsustainable, and that renewables are the energy source of the future," Türk asserted. "Production capacity for renewables increased five-fold between 2011 and 2023. What we need now is a roadmap that shows us how to rethink our societies, economies and politics in ways that are equitable and sustainable. That is, a just transition."
"This shift requires an end to the production and use of fossil fuels and other environmentally destructive activities across all sectors—from energy to farming to finance to construction and beyond," he added. "This will be one of the greatest transformations our world has ever seen."
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The New White House Carbon Offsetting ‘Principles’ Lack Teeth
The administration should find the courage to reverse course and acknowledge that carbon offsets are a dangerous and damaging distraction.
Jun 06, 2024
As U.S. President Joe Biden seeks to regain American leadership in the global fight against climate change, his administration has embraced using “carbon offsets” in international carbon markets.
Acknowledging widespread criticism of the reliability of these offsets, on May 28, the administration issued a “Voluntary Carbon Markets Joint Policy Statement” signed by the secretaries of the Treasury, Agriculture, and Energy, among other officials. However, nothing in the statement overcomes the inherent flaws that make carbon offsets a dangerous distraction.
The urgency of the climate crisis means that the planet does not have time to engage in illusory market-based trading schemes that pretend to counterbalance—rather than actually reduce—greenhouse gases emissions.
The Administration’s Policy Statement lays out a set of aspirational “principles” for certification of carbon credits to allegedly ensure they “meet credible atmospheric integrity standards and represent real decarbonization”:
• Additional. The activity would not have occurred in the absence of the incentives of the crediting mechanism and is not required by law or regulation.
• Unique. One credit corresponds to only one tonne of carbon dioxide (or its equivalent) reduced or removed from the atmosphere and is not double-issued.
• Real and Quantifiable. Claimed emissions reductions or removals represent genuine atmospheric impact that is determined in a transparent and replicable manner using robust, credible methodologies. Relevant activities are designed to prevent emissions from occurring, being shifted, or intensifying beyond their boundaries as a result of the activity (‘leakage’).
• Validation and verification. Activity design is validated, and results are verified, by a qualified, accredited, independent third party.
• Permanence of greenhouse gas benefits. The emissions removed or reduced will be kept out of the atmosphere for a specified period of time during which any credited results that are released back into the atmosphere are fully remediated.
• Robust baselines. Baselines for emissions reduction and removal activities are based on rigorous methodologies that avoid over-crediting, prioritizing the use of performance benchmarks…
However, this list of goals highlights why reliance on carbon credits has only produced illusory benefits and counterproductive results.
The Biden administration is not proposing enforcement mechanisms that would ensure these core qualities are reflected in international credit transactions, because such mechanisms do not exist. Without enforcement these “guardrails” are merely a wish list, tantamount to a store combatting shoplifting only by putting up signs that say, “Do Not Steal.”
It is also clear that the amount of money these carbon markets are poised to generate, bolstered by Biden administration support, is enormous. The temptation to game a multi-billion-dollar system that has no enforceable rules is overwhelming and will help keep us addicted to business-as-usual emissions.
At the same time, the urgency of the climate crisis means that the planet does not have time to engage in illusory market-based trading schemes that pretend to counterbalance—rather than actually reduce—greenhouse gases emissions.
Experts who have studied carbon offsets, like Barbara Haya at University of California, Berkeley, have found they are inherently flawed for a host of reasons and cannot be reformed. A clear indication that carbon offsets are unfixable is that virtually all carbon offset projects created to date are built on activities that were already happening, for reasons other than the generally low and volatile price of offset payments. And, to date, no one has even proposed a reliable way to distinguish those activities that would have happened anyway. In addition, since carbon offsets must be based on activities that are not legally required, they create a perverse incentive to delay appropriate regulation.
With forest projects, these problems are compounded by their impermanence, which is heightened by warming-accelerated wildfires. In addition, the integrity of forest projects is easily undercut by demand shifting. If one forest is preserved but demand for wood is not reduced, another forest will be cut.
Together, these factors highlight that the administration’s wish list of guardrails is completely out of touch with the reality of carbon offsets. As California is discovering, reliance upon its highly touted carbon credit market is resulting in far more emissions than an effective regulatory program.
The administration should find the courage to reverse course and acknowledge that carbon offsets are a dangerous and damaging distraction. Offsets undermine our ability to adopt effective strategies to achieve our climate goals. These include ending fossil fuel subsidies and supporting enforceable regulations. Other key provisions would be transparent polluter-pays carbon pricing, programs to ensure energy affordability during a transition away from fossil fuels, public investments in clean energy transmission and transit, and international agreements with easily measurable results. Effective U.S. leadership would mean developing a national climate law worthy of the moment and building public support for its enactment. This country’s environmental laws have transformed our nation and been influential elsewhere. They should be our inspiration.
We understand that carbon credits seductively offer to harness powerful market forces and raise money for climate-positive projects. However, this siren’s call has all the integrity of a Ponzi scheme. In short, as the U.S. has repeatedly experienced, meaningful reductions in pollution require the inescapable hard work of designing programs with reliably measurable outcomes and enforcing them.
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