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carbon offsets
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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Manure Digesters: Another False Solution That Makes Climate Injustice Worse
There are better responses to the climate crisis that also treat rural people and our land, air, and water with respect.
Apr 21, 2024
There has been much media hype about manure digesters and how they will “solve” climate change by capturing and burning methane from confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs—aka factory farms. Billions in taxpayer handouts and other incentives through pollution offset trading markets are encouraging factory farms to expand and profit from their waste stream. Some economists now speculate that factory farms are earning more from making methane than milk!
A recent Friends of the Earth and Socially Responsible Agriculture Project report
goes even further, suggesting that if the U.S. really wanted to reduce it’s agricultural contribution towards greenhouse gases, it would make more sense for regulators to phase out or split up CAFOs and shift taxpayer support towards smaller grass-based livestock operations instead.
Sadly, the misguided notion of manure digesters as a “solution” to the climate crisis is nothing new. Back in 2009 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, I almost fell off my chair when then-U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that manure digesters on factory farms were going to be a key part of former President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda. He later admitted that less than 10% of dairy farms (ie CAFOs) would be large enough to qualify for these USDA digester grants—another example of how federal policies support industrial agribusiness to the detriment of smaller farmers.
Intentional factory farm production and subsequent “climate smart” combustion of methane is not only oxymoronic, but will undermine the future prospect of life here on Earth.
This manure digester building binge has ramped up even more under President Joe Biden—with Vilsack once again back at the helm of the USDA. The latest Instititue for Agriculture and Trade Policy report critiquing the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) reveals just how much of this popular USDA effort has been hijacked by a small elite number of CAFOs, to the detriment of the majority of farmers who have their EQIP applications declined. Encouraging livestock grazing is NOT front and center among “climate smart” practices promoted under EQIP and the Natural Resources Conservation Service—that star role is held by waste lagoons and manure digesters.
A typical CAFO digester for 2000 dairy cows costs over $2 million, with EQIP covering up to $400,000. But there are many other funds available, such as through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which bankrolled $78 million for digesters in the last decade. The recent Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) added another $250 million to EQIP, along with another $2 billion for REAP, including a brand new 30% tax credit for all new digesters built.
The current trough of taxpayer funding for the manure methane industrial complex is long and deep, but there is even more potential revenue to be milked. In Wisconsin alone there are now 15 manure digesters getting money for their methane offsetting of 1.3 million carbon credits available through the California Cap and Trade System. How does this work? Build a methane digester in Wisconsin, claim that by burning off this really bad methane it is equal to reducing the impact of so many tons of carbon dioxide emitted in California, and then get a bonus check for that hard offset work! The value of one carbon credit on the California market as of April 2023 was $28.66.
The problem with this taxpayer mandated and subsidized “cap and trade” system is that it does not necessarily reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions—it just moves pollution around (and the atmosphere doesn’t care about your zipcode). Worse yet, if your offset claims prove to be bogus and corrupt, the climate crisis ends up much worse. This was exactly the case when Midwest activists alerted California officials that some of the Wisconsin CAFOs claiming methane offset credits were really engaged in wire fraud, since their digesters were either broken or not effectively functioning to capture methane as claimed. More details can be found in the SRAP expose of this 21st century Ponzi style scheme. Along with many allies, Family Farm Defenders has been diligently opposing such corporatized pollution trading mechanisms through the Alliance Against Farm Bill Offsets, whether they involve offsets for carbon sequestration pipelines, manure digesters, or “no-till” GMO monocultures.
My gut reaction 15 years ago to Vilsack’s manure digester panacea to global climate change remains true today—why pay to fix a problem that doesn’t even need to exist? Countless studies have shown that the most cost effective, eco-friendly, and often quite profitable form of animal husbandry—including dairying—is managed rotational grazing. If animals are just allowed to enjoy pasture outside (as they prefer and are meant to do by mother nature) and then also allowed to deposit their manure in a healthy perennial ecosystem, one does not end up with a methane crisis. It is only when one decides to confine thousands of animals in a warehouse, offer them nothing but TMR to consume (with dubious components like feather meal and ethanol leftovers), liquefy millions of gallons of their manure, and then store it in massive anaerobic lagoons, that one creates a pollutant 80+ times worse than carbon dioxide.
Sure, one can always capture and burn the methane that doesn’t leak from a CAFO digester to make electricity or run a vehicle (which means more greenhouse gas pollution), but you still have the leftover sludge (aka digestate) to deal with. This is loaded with nitrates, phosphorous, and—depending upon what other waste gets dumped into the digester—PFAS, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, heavy metals—which will then seep into the ground and became part of runoff, contributing to tainted wells, beach closures, toxic fish, the list goes on and on. Besides methane, there are other toxic CAFO gases—such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and nitrous oxide—that cause chronic headaches for neighboring residents and hurt anyone else downwind.
And let’s not forget the ever present danger of methane explosions and lagoon ruptures. When a massive lagoon leaked on a hog factory farm in Wayne County, North Carolina, in May 2022, spilling into the nearby Nahunta Swamp, it was revealed that hundreds of rotting pigs, along with deli meat and discarded hotdogs, were part of the digester feedstock to make the methane being sold to Duke Energy. Closer to home, just ask anyone who lives near Waunakee, Wisconsin, what it was like to have a poorly designed and managed digester both explode and also leak 400,000+ gallons of fresh manure into Lake Mendota about a decade ago. This single disaster set back Yahara Watershed cleanup efforts for years. It would have been so much cheaper, simpler, and less disastrous for Wisconsin state and Dane County taxpayers to have promoted composting instead (which some better CAFOs actually do, without lagoons).
In November 2022 Kari Lydersen wrote a disturbing investigation, chronicling the many risks to farm workers from factory farms and their manure digesters. She tells one story of Bob Baenziger, Jr., retired Army veteran and former offshore oil rig diver, who died in 2021 as a hired contractor trying to fix a broken cable in an Iowa manure digester. Drowning in such a squalid pool is something straight out of Dante’s Inferno. The same year Samuel Antonio Padilla Castro, a Honduran immigrant, was working a 12-hour shift at the Fair Oaks Farm in Indiana when his clothing was caught in manure handling equipment, strangling him to death. His death left behind a widow, three children, and a token $10,500 Occupational Safety and Health Administration fine. Austin Frerick’s profile of the McCloskey family, which owns Fair Oaks Farm, in his new book, Barons, reveals more of the underbelly of this “Dairy Disneyland,” including their role as digester cheerleaders. Another Fair Oaks tourist and digester advocate he mentions is Tom Vilsack.
Our current “get big or get out” farm policy does not have much time or interest in agroecological approaches for healthier food that also ensure food sovereignty. Instead, corporate agribusiness is allowed to manipulate commodity markets—driving out what little competition exists from smaller farmers and local processors. The political allies of the food giants then ensure that taxpayers help underwrite the largest industrialized operations left standing, since they are the easiest to vertically integrate into the dominant oligopoly structure. Is it any surprise to see agribusiness lobbyists and their academic apologists now touting manure digesters as “climate smart” just in time for Earth Day and pushing for pollution trading offset schemes within the 2024 Farm Bill?
Thankfully, there are better responses to the climate crisis that also treat rural people and our land, air, and water with respect. Existing federal initiatives such as the Conservation Reserve Program could be expanded to better direct payments to farmers who are already doing so much responsible land and climate stewardship—without carbon offset peddlers skimming 25% off the top. The EQIP and REAP programs need to be overhauled to severely limit or even eliminate CAFO lagoon and digester grants and earmark more towards smaller grass-based diversified operations instead. This is the gist behind the EQIP Reform Act, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah) last year as part of the Farm Bill debate.
More generally, factory farms must be treated as a pollution point source, subject to all the monitoring, regulation, and liability required for any other industrial operation. Why should CAFOs evade the common sense oversight that other businesses respect? Defending local control also remains critical. Last year grassroots activists in St. Croix County were able to push back and shut down a massive digester proposal near New Richmond, Wisconsin, being aggressively promoted by Nature Energy, a Shell Oil subsidiary. Thousands of folks recently responded to a statewide action alert successfully demanding that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers veto CAFO industry-crafted preemption legislation that would have hamstrung the right to pass ordinances that would restrict their manure digesters and other rural mal-development projects. Democratic direct action can get the goods!
NASA space probes have revealed that there is a massive ocean of liquid methane on Titan, one of the moons circling Saturn. There is also not any life that we know of on Titan… Intentional factory farm production and subsequent “climate smart” combustion of methane is not only oxymoronic, but will undermine the future prospect of life here on Earth. Farmers can feed the world and the cool the planet—without the false promise of manure digesters.
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