Heidi Blake sul New Yorker parla (alt) di South Pole, azienda leader nel mercato dei “carbon offset“, uno strumento che dovrebbe permettere ad aziende che emettono anidride carbonica di compensare le loro emissioni con azioni che rimuovono l’anidride carbonica dall’atmosfera (per chi fosse interessato a due disanime, molto critiche – ma con toni comici – sui carbon offset, rimandiamo ai due video in coda alla segnalazione).

South Pole thus pioneered a model of carbon offsetting that has been counted among our best hopes for staving off climate catastrophe: a mechanism that diverts funds from polluters in wealthy countries to protect crucial ecosystems in the Global South.

South Pole nasce da un’idea di Heurberger e alcuni altri studenti dell’ETH Zurich:

In 2002, as they neared the end of their studies, Heuberger, Muench, and a classmate named Patrick Bürgi were invited to a sustainability conference in Costa Rica. Preparing a presentation on carbon trading, Heuberger and Bürgi decided to make the concept more tangible by asking attendees to pay to offset the emissions from their flights. They got hold of a credit-card imprinter and ambushed delegates after each session: “Do you know that you emitted two tons of CO₂ by coming to this conference?”

Uno dei progetti più profittevoli di South Pole, il progetto Kariba in Zimbawe:

was among the world’s first “avoided deforestation” programs; by deterring local people from chopping down trees, it promised to prevent the release of tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gas.

To secure coöperation in the area, flyers were distributed with cartoons of trees growing in the shape of dollar signs. Wentzel persuaded local chiefs to allow him to expand the project across four large districts, spanning two million acres of forest.

Questo stesso progetto e’ stato anche oggetto di scrutinio, specialmente da parte della piattaforma di giornalismo investigativo Follow the Money. Serie accuse sono state quindi rivolte a South Pole quando varie stime hanno dimostrato che i benefici di questo progetto sono stati ampiamenti sovrastimati da Verra, altra azienda del settore che è già stata ripetutamente oggetto di critiche.

To register the Kariba project with Verra, South Pole had to predict how much of the forest would be lost without any intervention, and thus determine how much carbon the scheme would conserve over a thirty-year life span. Credits would be issued every year against that total, and the prediction would be checked once a decade, by comparing Kariba with an unguarded reference area nearby. South Pole’s data analysts initially estimated that the program could save around fifty-two million tons of carbon. But Verra required them to rerun these calculations using one of its approved methodologies. The scientists used one named VM9, which generated a startlingly different projection: if the Kariba site was left undefended, deforestation would explode, resulting in the eventual loss of ninety-six per cent of the forest. On that basis, the project would be eligible for almost two hundred million credits—four times the initial estimate.

Questo scandalo ha recentemente portato alle dimissioni (alt) di Heurberger.

Il settore comunque non e’ nuovo a scandali, uno dei più eclatanti scoppio’ nel 2009 e fu motivo di notevole imbarazzo per il governo danese.

Questi scandali e la scarsa trasparenza hanno anche convinto la University of California ad abbandonare i suoi piani per investire nel mercato dei carbon offset, sostituendoli con la riduzioni delle emissioni e progetti sviluppati dall’università stessa.