With growing frequency, global carbon offset “dealers” are now being exposed as frauds and fakers, involved in global hot-money schemes. In the last month, the top “carbon offset” company, South Pole, has come under fire, resulting in a major curtailment of activities. While there’s a lot of hypocritical “pot vs kettle” finger-pointing, the rotten core of UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney’s green looting scheme is bubbling to the surface. Note that this activity involves the “voluntary” carbon market, whose products are classified as derivatives by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association—and not the “mandated” carbon market, which operates under relatively regulated “cap and trade” systems.
South Pole, registered in Switzerland, and described as “first and largest” carbon offsetter—said to be the pioneer for the voluntary carbon offsetting market—was established in 2006, and underwent explosive growth beginning in 2010, recently being valued at nearly a billion dollars.
In October 2023, the South Pole hot-money circus had become too hard to hide, and the company was forced to sever connections with its primary and most lucrative offset “source,” the Kariba Forest Project in northern Zimbabwe. Articles exposing the project—said to have been oversold several hundreds of times—had begun appearing throughout 2022, and increasing in detail and frequency in 2023. After the entirety of South Pole’s dirty laundry was aired by a New Yorker tell-all as “The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle” on Oct. 16, someone decided to pull the plug.
On Oct. 18, South Pole announced the lay-off of 200 employees, and by Oct. 27 had announced the complete termination of the Kariba Forest Project, including relations with its Zimbabwe-based manager. New Yorker’s Heidi Blake described his Guernsey-based Carbon Green Investments as nothing but an offshore money-laundering outpost. But the dominoes continued to fall.