When carbon registries become market makers, who audits the auditors?
The voluntary offset market has built a lucrative circular economy of self-certification that undermines real decarbonisation.
The revelation that forty-two million tonnes of voluntary carbon credits represent phantom double-counted offsets should surprise no one who has studied the financial plumbing of environmental verification.
Under the current architecture, certifying bodies derive their primary fee income directly from the project developers whose claims they are tasked with evaluating. It is the exact rating-agency conflict that fueled the 2008 mortgage crisis, repainted in shades of green.
As long as corporate buyers are permitted to purchase absolution from private registries with zero sovereign oversight, the market will continue to reward the most creative carbon accountants rather than the deepest industrial emissions cuts.
The solution is straightforward: strip private registries of their unilateral certification authority and integrate offset audits directly into statutory corporate financial filings.
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