What's noteworthy here is that 'greens' were completely blind to all this coming at them while us skeptics saw it coming a long time ago. You see, us non-governmental scientific types who quickly realized long ago that there was, (and still is), zero measurable evidence that all of the CO2 in the air can drive climate let alone the puny extra amount that human activity adds - well, we were then faced with explaining something that you guys were not and that is, WHY are the people at the top continuing this fraud? Getting rich was the only explanation and Al Gore is the poster boy. While he has continued to do NOTHING himself to lead by example, using more electricity in one week than the entire country of Uganda does in a whole year, he has been busy stuffing over $100 million in his pocket. Look at the damage that is being done with this scam. For example, biofuel is not only going to cause more destruction of forest land, it is going to starve the third world because we people in rich countries will be able to BUY the food right out of the mouths of the poor in order to burn it in our cars and homes. Al Gore believes the masses of poor in the third world need to be culled and biofuel is one of the ways to do it via starvation, (he really is an evil man!). Solar panels... you can't put them over trees or under trees and trees like to grow exactly in the same place where the sun is strongest - the tropics. That leaves low latitude desert regions but those areas are very remote and aren't 'dead' either, (ask Dianne Feinstein about turtles in the Mojave). Windmills.. are killing tens of thousands of birds just in Altamont alone; many are protectsed species too. 17% of Denmark's electricty capacity is now wind power but they have not decommissioned a single coal/oil power plant. So where's the savings in doing that? (hint there isn't any; the money went to GE, etc.). CO2 is a harmless gas required for life on earth and has been at MUCH higher levels in our geologic past with no evidence to show that it caused temperature to rise even when it was 10 times what it is now. (And there's no hot spot either, etc. etc. etc.)

I know it's tough to admit that you've being scammed but you are.

i'm pretty sure greenpeace thinks that this is serious. i'm under the assumption that this is a hilarious satire, but i'm not sure people are getting it. i know explaining the joke ruins it for everyone, but, please, just so people on your side aren't trying to fight you.

This is ridiculous! You are ridiculous and the video is ridiculous! It doesn't make sense, nothing you typed makes sense. Feel proud of you? Your kids probably will. Let's see together how many people will write down their support to your legendary brainwave!

Why don't we focus on helping the environment in general? It is pretty obvious the things we are doing that directly harm the planet. This video shows exactly what carbon offsetting IS going to turn into....

As a fan of Greenpeace (and Greenpeace USA's former Media Director), I'm disappointed in this website. Here's why: I work to solve climate change and protect tropical forests as Washington Director of Avoided Deforestation Partners and dropping offsets would spell disaster for forests - and for the climate.

I think the first key point is that these are not your daddy's offsets. There are very strong safeguards built into climate legislation (especially around forests) to ensure that they deliver strong reductions in climate pollution. Among others: you can't get credit for conservation projects until you've proven that you've actually sequestered the carbon, national baselines have to be established for countries to participate so that conservation happens nationwide and not just locally, and biodiversity and indigenous people have to be protected. I detailed some (but not all) of these protections here:

But perhaps more directly, there's no realistic plan on this website to end deforestation. Deforestation causes 20 percent of global warming pollution, more than all the cars, trucks, ships, and planes in the world. Reforestation can help restore forests (tropical and non-tropical) to their former glory and suck up a lot of carbon while they're at it. But ending deforestation and restoring forests will require offsets - the set-aside funding alone just won't do it. The American Clean Energy and Security bill sets aside five percent of its allowances for tropical forest conservation - providing something like $4-5 billion in annual funding for forests. That's great, but, as you know, that's nowhere near the $40 billion we need to end deforestation. And we're engaged in a furious fight just to defend that $4-5 billion from those who want to raid it to finance polluters. The reality is that set-aside funding for environmental conservation and other public purposes (like education) is routinely raided during budget crunches or just for whatever the political cause du jour is. It's not adequate, and it won't be enough. And there are questions about whether it provides the kind of certainty in pollution reductions that offsets do.

There's a conceptual failure implicit in this criticism of offsets. Offsets provide low cost emissions reductions. That means we can achieve more emissions reductions for less money. Given that there's (unfortunately) a political and economic limit on how much cost Congress is willing to accept to pass climate legislation, dropping offsets will mean that the targets for reducing pollution will be weakened accordingly. According to the EPA, this legislation would have been 89 percent more expensive if international offsets had been excluded (and even more expensive if domestic offsets were excluded). Drop the offsets, and Congress would weaken the targets, which would be a disaster for the climate.

If you doubt that, check out this report that came out just this morning from the National Center on Energy Policy, which is run by Obama's former chief energy advisor Jason Grumet. They're a very centrist group, but they have a lot of influence. They argue that, largely because of the strict environmental and social controls on offsets in climate legislation, there won't be enough offsets available to provide that 89 percent cost containment. As a result, they advocate setting a "price collar" - including a maximum price on carbon. That's a terrible idea that would have the effect of letting polluters off the hook if the price of a ton of carbon goes above, say, $35 per ton. If that happens, polluters don't have to adhere to the legislation's cap - which would be disastrous for the climate. But that's the alternative to not including offsets.

Now, that doesn't mean that all the offsets in climate legislation or the proposed international climate agreement are good ones. We shouldn't provide carbon credit to, for instance, big dams, as has been done under the Clean Development Mechanism. Even if one accepts their carbon reductions, the damage they do to rivers and local communities is enormous. These dams should be removed, not subsidized (tell that to the World Bank, which has drastically increased their subsidies for dams). And, as I discussed in this post, there are real worries that the standards behind the domestic agricultural and biomass offsets are way too weak - meaning that they could undermine a lot of the good work the legislation does to protect forests. I think there's a fairly easy way to tell which kinds of offsets we should be suspicious of and which we shouldn't: look at what those backing certain kinds of offsets are saying: in general, those willing to embrace rigorous scientific and social standards can be trusted more than those who are lobbying for weaker standards, such as the Big Ag lobby.

But the problems with some offsets doesn't mean we should throw good offsets out the window too, given how critical they are to solving the climate crisis - and that's especially true when it comes to tropical forest offsets. To be honest, Greenpeace lacks credibility on this issue. Greenpeace was one of the groups that lobbied to exclude tropical forest offsets from the Kyoto Protocol. As a result of that mistake, more than 300 million acres of forest were destroyed in the last ten years, producing an amount of pollution equivalent to ten times the United States' annual pollution (New York Times editorial on this topic here).

I wish Greenpeace, like most of the rest of the environmental movement, had learned from this mistake and was engaged in constructive solutions to deforestation and the climate crisis, instead of undermining overall climate goals. This website really detracts from the good work Greenpeace does in other areas. We need Greenpeace fighting to protect the climate - in particular by advocating for legislation with stronger overall climate targets and by getting President Obama to take bolder action to tackle the climate crisis. I hope Greenpeace can return to this important work soon.