Im carry Johnston Indo how the top stories on al jazeera ukrainians are celebrating in the Southern City of hassan after the retreat of russian forces. Its one of the most significant victories for ukrainian troops since russia in bait. In february, president for the mazda lensky, held it as an historic day financing reach a film over on us. Along as of this evening, the Defense Forces have established control over more than 60 settlements. In kennesaw regional, the police have started sterilization measures everywhere in liberated territory. Our expert technicians have a lot. So worth to you. Almost 2000 explodes you items have already been removed. If europe is government and rebel forces have come to an agreement to facilitate humanitarian access to wart on to gray and other regions in the north, the pledge was signed in nairobi. In the u. S, the democrats have won a key midterm race and arizona. Mark kellys victory leaves them one seat away from keeping control of the senate. Boats are still being counted in nevada while georgia is set to go to a run off boat in december. A classified u. S. Intelligence report is set to expose efforts by the United Arab Emirates to manipulate the american political system. 3 people who read the report told the washington post. It outlines and morality tends to stay at u. S. Foreign policy by both legal and illegal needs. Canyon troops deployed as part of an east African Regional force have arrived in eastern democratic republic of congo. The soldiers will provide assistance to congolese forces. Back in the m 23 rebel Group Fighting has intensified across north kiva province. In recent days, you and climate talks in egypt are reaching their half way points, but negotiators are still working to address key issues. Us climate and voice john kerry said his country is ready to discuss, moves to address loss and damage compensation with emphasized, all nations have responsibility to find solutions. A pair of world war 2 aeroplanes have collided at an air show in dallas, texas. Witnesses say the plains hate each other for crashing to the ground. Theres no confirmation yet of any casualties, and its not known how many people were on board. Those are the headlines for new continues here in al jazeera. Thats after our program. All hell, look at it. There is a story being spun, a fantasy whipping, sold the notion that we can offset all the ca, than we generate that i can even get on to a fly 25 to take the right box and create a few extra dollars when purchasing my ticket. My journey can be Carbon Neutral with net 0 implications for the planet. Carbon offsets net 0 Carbon Neutral. All of these catch phrases, these labels, they found to good to be true. Not because they are with climate breakdown is the existential crisis about age. In fact, its been the more serious threat to life for at least a couple of generations. But now we finally reached a point where a majority of governments and populations agree that this is a monumental issue. And if you listen to politicians and corporate leaders, it seems theyre pulling out all the stops. Making ambitious pledges to slow down, if not hope, the destruction of our planet. Europe will be the worlds 1st climate neutral continent. Net 0 emissions and thats 0 by 20. 50 mid. You little soul. Here are the sophie, she said hunger becoming a net 0 Emissions Energy business by 2050, 2030 for our restaurants. No impact on the planet. Were completely net 0. Were completely neutral. Those premises sound great, but when you pull apart the language, those key phrases and turns things get a little murky. It is important to remember that the language of Carbon Neutral or net 0 emissions is incredibly misleading and high. Its important contradictions. Joanna keybo is an environmental researcher who has spent more than a decade analyzing Climate Policies and Climate Justice issues is basically based on an idea that pollution can be compensated somewhere else by a project implemented mostly in the yellow south that should either avoid the missions or absorb emissions and by doing so pump and say the pollution from the polluter, not because theyre reducing, not because they are capping their emissions, but because they are getting some credits that are doing the compensation that the cleaning up somewhere else. This logic of offsetting is what is misleading in all of these language, because one would think, oh companies are actually doing something about it. They are addressing the problem and that is confusing for people in human society. They are trying to demand some action for Climate Change. The reason climate, scientists, and activists a seriously question Carbon Offsetting or carbon mutual programs, is because they just do not do what they claim. They cant, not when the fundamental premise on which these programs are based is so deeply flawed. Lets take an example. Im traveling to tasmania, where some of these programs are based, and im flying with quantas australias Largest Airline company, which also happens to run one of the largest offsetting programs of any airline in the world called fly Carbon Neutral. You as a passenger one to 5 Carbon Neutral to die, the best way is to voluntarily Carbon Offset your flight. Its an enticing idea when i buy my ticket. The calculation is made by the airline for my contribution to the amount of fuel used for my journey, and therefore emissions released. And i pay an extra fee, in this case, just over 5. 00. That money is then given to a number of other companies for you, some Carbon Offsetting projects. Here are the ones that quantas with quantas on my behalf has basically bought a carbon credit permission to keep emitting on the basis that trees or Renewable Energy can offset pollution. One credit represents one ton of Carbon Emissions. The math looks simple. One negative, this one positive equals whats called net 0. But what youre saying, joanna, is that equation doesnt really work. So it is really important that we understand that there are 2 very different types of carbon. And this is very talk a while, but hes full num info. So we have a phosphate carbone. These deposits that are locked under ground for meals and millions of years. And then you have the biological carbon, which is this more dynamic carbon, the flows around trees. They did, they, ocean, i mean, dynamic changes goes from one to the other. But what is not mentioned in the Climate Crisis is that im looking for a car that took millions of years to be create that are being burned in the shape of petroleum. Gov or coal mem, my scale, i mean a short period of time. And that creates impossible imbalance for the earth capacity to deal with these to absorb, to regulate if we dont stop burning petroleum, oil and gas, we are not addressing the problem. An offset is a way to not talk about the theres really no such a Carbon Offset. If you really look at it, its made up. Tom gold tooth is a climate, justice activist, and executive director of the indigenous environmental network. There is no such thing off steady pollution by transients 3. Even the scientists agree with that. You cant swap carbon thats been part of rushed in process across the fields for above ground carbon in the biosphere. Theyre separate entities, but the market system does a different sheet that they package it up to gather. So were being scammed when theres really no. I said its just a way of Business People to make money and to look good on paper. So if thats in my there for the scheme where this molecule is coming from, when was he done or how long it was that most fear, what it matters, these the polluter, half an accounting sheet, some numbers where it says how many molecules they are meeting. And they also project on the other side that comes in teeth where they say, how many c o 2 molecules they are absorbing or reducing or avoiding me. And therefore these trading can happen. Business in the net 0 industry is booming. Amazon, you lever, disney, google sem, max and shell a, some of the Largest Companies using offset programs to reach the sustainability goals. Google is the 1st Major Company to eliminate our empire carbon legacy co. Now with all of my local lawn, no 1st net 0, c o 2 concrete world 1st certified Carbon Neutral commercial Vehicle Engine oil. These companies and the people managing their offset programs, sound really convinced about the value of their campaigns. We are going to keep improving and why we do that. Were also going to offset our remaining emissions from today. We are offsetting all the Carbon Emissions from our flight with any remaining emissions that you cannot eliminate with real change. You are agreeing to do offsets. Now if by this point you think the whole Carbon Offset net 0 obsession is an elaborate ruse created by big corporations as a destruction and diversion tactic, we wouldnt be completely wrong. Big business, especially big oil, has played a significant role in lobbying for and developing Carbon Trading markets. However, theres been other key players that have been instrumental in the process, including the United Nations and whole bunch of governments. In fact, the very idea of emissions trading of turning carbon into a commodity was one of the highlights of the 1997 kyoto protocol, which was a Milestone International treaty broken by the un to deal with the Climate Crisis. For long industrialized countries that are part of the political have a clear obligation to reduce emissions. To do so, they can use the market to trade a new commodity cabinet. Under the kyoto protocol, signatory governments would participate in a system called cap and trade. The 1st half of this process, the negotiation of carbon caps, would place limits on emissions from countries and big corporations. However, if they couldnt stay within the specified Carbon Emissions limits, then they still had an out. And thats where the trade part of the program would kick in. Corporations could simply buy a carbon credit from another emitter who may have fallen below the threshold of emissions. Oh, from one of a number of other offsetting initiatives. In short, they could pick up a permit to continue emitting cop in the polluting corporation. Sorry. Can i sell banks and trade these permits that are also called allowances . So when the price is low, this scoop them up, they buy them up and bank them for later use when, when prices go up. So if, if these permits arent enough, ah, the polluters can purchase more Carbon Offsets from other sources with upsets. It has been actually a very cheap way for investor less qualities and companies to get off the hook to have no response. Have really there a cul de lee be real a completely for their pollution or her. They are distraction and we dont know a structural change. Advocates of the kyoto protocol would argue that the United Nations did create a scheme to encourage structural change. The Clean Development mechanism, or cdn, set up in 2001. It was the worlds 1st and so far largest Carbon Offset scheme. Countries with high emissions like canada, japan and australia could help achieve their own care to targets by purchasing credits linked to cobb and reduction programs in countries like china, india, and brazil, which needed to keep National Economic development on track. Pre committed to do so without generating the volume of emissions rich countries produced when they were growing their economies. So for example, if a power plant in australia needed to shape 10 percent of its emissions, it could by offsets from a solar power project in india, the power plant there might initially have been coal fueled, but the sale of carbon credits could help cover the high costs of developing solar power. The gap, an emissions between the hypothetical co plant and the actual solar farm would constitute the automated carbon that could now be sold as units of certified emissions reductions. Basically permission slips to allow polluting entities to put out the carbon that was supposedly being held from the atmosphere. The stadium was extremely popular in its heyday. More than 8000. 00 projects in a 111. 00 countries have registered with this game, which is handed out more than 2000000000. 00 carbon credits, representing a claim of more than 2000000000. 00 tons of Carbon Dioxide reduction, or avoidance. The un says the cdn has also funded more than 900000000000. 00 worth of Renewable Energy investment in developing countries. However, the program has been mired in complexity and controversy. It has been widely researched that the Clean Development mckinney some brought about incredible amount of injustice on the ground. So we see, for example, hydro electric dams are being said to produce clean energy. Is another misleading claim because it is in fact not clinical. We have the Energy Production that is produced by lab there, but there is a whole infrastructure that was built on, sometimes a forest or another river. It was system and the energy that these are deals there. Usually most of that im not going to lever to the Community Around that are most of the time without access to energy is going to be most of the times for Mining Industry that are nearby that need the energy in order to keep extracting. So we see how that the sign of the scheme is not really taking consideration of the social aspects of the environmental aspects. But hes only considering that accounting. Shes the cdm wasnt the only program of its kind 10 years after the kyoto protocol in 2007, another u. N backed program came into being the title made the mission pretty clear. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in short formed, read it tackled head on one of the most urgent problems facing those working on the Climate Crisis. The rapid degradation of vital forest sooner with the red plan was quite ingenious. In its simplicity, developing countries would basically be paid not to cut down trees. So i was big ones and never more. But it told us what is philo is a deforestation modeling expert in brazil, i was invited as our 2 scientists meeting the 1st red project, mozilla, and amazon for me together, which was several science. And then and, and i found that was not really cited roger, but roger sale covered french what elements of your work were included in the red program . We aware ione in developing modeling for simulating for station and a borrowed those methods to develop design, delusional, read baseline. So those amount of technical details, if the, the math of the methods brit helter refers to, is basically the maths. It begins with an estimation of how much deforestation could be expected in an area. If the financial incentives from red didnt exist. Unsurprisingly, the more deforestation you anticipate, the more carbon credits you generate, the more money you can make. The whole system is very vulnerable to being gained, so to try and add legitimacy by predicting deforestation. More accurately, some red projects employed a piece of Free Software developed by protell though cord jamica ega. The program focused land use changes over time and was designed to measure the specific impact of policy decisions on forested areas. For example, measuring the potential impact of expanding katelyn. So industries in the amazon basin, but as patel to points out, models are used to avert an undesirable outcome and cannot be used to predict feature. We have exclaim, well, dont support, apply visual models to set up baselines, the gross deforestation. The dance much more on the National Lead on. So if you say im going back to this region, the difference, its very small because all the drivers of that for station really control it. But they let it go signal that the bergman pass on paper. It makes sense to make Forest Conservation as lucrative as forest destruction is given that just making deforestation illegal with serious penalties doesnt seem to work anywhere. State corruption, Corporate Law being vested political and business interests, have all meant that. Outlawing deforestation has minimal impact, especially pointless. Red has not been able to develop a market for carbon credits that is robust and actually truly incentivizes forest protection. All of this means that deforestation is on the rise. Just take a look at the stats from brazil alone. New satellite data from brazils National Institute for Space Research shows that more than 3980 square kilometers of the amazon, an area, 2 and a half times the size of bangkok was cleared in the 1st 6 months of 2022. Thats an increase of 10. 6 percent from the Previous Year and the highest figure since 2015 when the institute began this type of monitoring, this green story is being repeated around the world in places like the congo emperor tongue gold to it has been a long time critic of Carbon Offsetting in general and programs like read in particular in 2010, he was blocked from entering the cop 16 conference center. The day after he publicly criticized the u. N. Process for Carbon Trading and red. Expanding Carbon Offset have real and damage and impacts on Indigenous Peoples and local communities, organization. And many the networks in my south was really major speaker apostasy where lou stickers with red on it with the black line, you know, read. I noticed it as i was boring out to exit the un meeting as i swipe my badge. If the computer screen had a red line through my face were viewed as troublemakers you could say. But were, were really looking for Real Solutions as what with doing criticism of how read programs are executed and not misplaced. In 2015, a french study into a 120. 00 read projects across latin america, east africa and asia found that nearly 40 percent overlapped with existing protected lans, Like National parks. Many had failed. The edition ality criteria, and the authors of the study concluded that red had been reduced to simply a logo to attract financing. Then is the 2018 findings out of no way by far the most generous supporter of red while simultaneously being a major exporter of oil and natural gas noise office of the order to general found that despite a decades work and 3000000000. 00 in funding results, from red projects were delayed and uncertain, especially since there was considerable risk of whats called leakage, which is basically when protecting one patch of land leads to deforestation elsewhere. Theres also the issue of permanence in order for trees to capture emissions. Those trees need to be around for a long time, centuries, not years, but because of Climate Change during carbon in trees has become increasingly unstable. Drought, fire, and flood will see many of the offset projects created today destroyed in the coming decades. Finally, theres a big issue with the land there simply isnt enough of it on earth to soak up the sheer amount of corporate Carbon Emissions. A 2021 oxfam report estimates that the amount of land required to meet the wilson at 0 targets could amount to 5 times the size of india. Thats more than the entire area of farmland on the planet. Much of it, whatever available land there is. Rightfully belongs to indigenous and other local peoples. In many cases, they have not been properly consulted and their rights to their traditional territory. A simply ignored with the system. So full of holes or when has done is create a new market for climate profiteers. Now after years, so having those the scheme in place and running, we see how long they are and how many projects that have been certified actually have a lot of conflicts on the ground and have a lot of you regularities. So there is a problem from the technical part of point of view or from the social aspect of the project, but nevertheless, the certify as our 3rd becoming a lot of these projects because its a business who is regulating the regulators, was like a sport market. You buyers market from one and then youve been resell to somebody else, this person then resell who, another one. And so it goes on. The market can become a monster itself and big its own bath. The graziano final go up market, make profit. Not really sure, mitigate time change the problems with red just kept piling up, even the u. N. Eventually couldnt dismiss the issues at cop 25. And when the 19 changes were made, read was re branded. It was now part of a series of schemes that are broadly called Nature Based Solutions. Among the many entities promoting versions of this phrase at the un climate meeting was a group of private corporations including b, p, shell, aramco and chevron. Together with a number of other b corporations, they call themselves the International EmissionsTrading Association or i. E t a through their markets for natural climate solutions. They say they will use nature in its entirety, to both remove Greenhouse Gases and to manage emissions. Assessing the effectiveness of so called Nature Based Solutions is not particularly challenging. All of the initiatives, whether associated with protecting and restoring forests, soils, wetlands, or marine environments replicate. And in fact, magnify the fundamental flaw present in the Clean Development mechanism and red that it is a compensation based system, Carbon Emissions, and not reduced in fed fair supposedly offset through complex and opaque emissions trading markets. Enabling companies to say that they are Carbon Neutral, even though theyre still burning fossil fuels in the onset of trading air ah, in a colonial market system treats it as a property. Right. So the question that is often resolved in mesa negotiations is the corporation ending up are only the property of the carbon in the trees. This idea which is the complete nearly early station of the claim of the bathe, where all nature should become a therapist. Provider drew human is very deep alarming threat to forest people because kind of each of these claims there is lamb that is being enclosed for doing another project. So what we called is that there is a conservation industry nowadays with governments and corporations saying offsets are a key part of the solution. Average consumers cannot contribute further to the degradation of our planet had been persuaded to take part in the charade. There are momentary programs being sold to offset everything from household emissions to car emissions and something called yep, huge a website that enables individuals to offset their own breadth for 27. 00 a year. Carbon market scenarios are being utilized to allow Civil Society to relieve their guilt if a diversion technique used by carbon traders to distract the public from the apartment action of keeping the oil and hole in the ground. Thats part in mind when we see, you know, these years of us will see a shows and climate. The base is the police. Anything, even though so many games have been put in place, we need to think of also the scheme that hes actually making the problem worse. Not making it better. So there is no book project or but project only certification. It just kind of masks the quizzes. December is underneath, after 25 plus years of fighting the carbon market. I think we can reasonably claim that carbon treaty offset the carbon prize theme and all of the iterations of red plus nature base solution. Net 0 emissions target, and its all the same thing. It is the biggest distraction and scam on mother earth on the planet. Theres a story being spun, a lie, were being told. Its the notion that we can offset all the carbon we generate. The only way to reduce Carbon Pollution is to reduce Carbon Emissions, to actually cut fossil fuel extraction and usage. All of the other stuff tree planting, protecting, and restoring ecosystems investing in Renewable Energy. All of thats great and very much needed. But without reducing our structural demand for fossil fuels, we are in effect, not just doing nothing. When making things worse. Also, tara, making us believe that something is being done when actually what is being done isnt worse. And the problem is allowing the drivers to go, im expands, to even claim that is green, that is sustainable. So instead of talking about fossil fuels, were talking about c o 2 molecules. And while doing so, it actually conceals all the violence and the abuse of power that the fossil fuel industry is billed upon. Many of us living with the effects of ecological breakdown. So what would the stories in which Technology Holds the promise of salvation for the planet, billionaires big tech and an unwavering faith in innovation alley re investigates where the techno optimism is helping or hindering the fight against Climate Change. Its a destruction self delusional. He just masking over it all hail the planet episode to on al jazeera. Ah ah. Hello, we are now seeing the last stove. What was hurricane nicole making its way away from the eastern seaboard of the u. S. Eastern parts of canada. As position of the storm at the moment, long trailing where the front just to the south of that it makes his way further east was but ahead of it you say the temperature is neil, can they see still op around the 20 degree map of that cool away that is in the prices. The sinking further south was 5 celsius for toronto, 3 celsius, the apple, chicago. I mean, just about getting into double figures there in new york and in they say so we will see cooler, fresh weather coming, backing behind. But it should brighten up for the most part, dr. Roscoe central part of the u. S. And i, which was west will that maybe want a to showers around the showers, longest bells to find nash the way a little farther south was an ace was as we go through monday. And well see some heavy rain coming in across oklahoma and on in to texas, dallas struggling to get around 8 degrees celsius of that state. Try and find to the east of thats some dry weather into the caribbean as well. But remember, at trading a weather system that just coming out of the backend of nicole, thats still bringing some live, the showers across the good parts of cuba. Easing a little further east, which this week i 3, monday or disguised, come backing behind it with a rash of showers and showers. Tea for a good part of central america. Ah ah