Environmentalists have decided that letting kids trick or treat on Halloween is increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the only solution is for the activists to get more money to fight it.
Environmentalists suspect that candy eaten by trick-or-treating kids probably generates a lot of CO2 and therefore isn’t sustainable. The environmental website TerraPass even encourages parents to “start a new trend and skip the candy handouts, opting for more sustainable treats as a greener way of participating in the festivities. Instead of candy coated, sugary bites, offer up little storybooks, crayons, playing cards or toys.”
TerraPass claims Halloween isn’t an eco-friendly holiday because “pre-packaged sugar packs a big punch with respect to your carbon footprint” and that plastic wrappers of the candy were likely shipped over great distances, adding to the amount of CO2. The group claims that 6 ounces of CO2 are emitted for every milk chocolate bar produced, but that you can buy down your guilt by paying them money.
“It can be difficult to resist the temptation of those yummy, pumpkin-shaped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” TerraPass continues. “Fortunately, you can cancel out the carbon footprint of your favorite candies by purchasing Carbon Offsets from TerraPass. Offsets reduce your environmental footprint and support emission reduction projects that make a lasting difference.”
Carbon offsets have been heavily criticized by the scientific community. An article in the scientific journal Nature claims “[o]ffsetting is worse than doing nothing.”
“It is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth,” according to the article.
Carbon off-set schemes have a long history of scams and corruption. The government of New Zealand paid for carbon offsets that were criminal scams and didn’t reduce the emissions they’d promised, a report by the philanthropic Morgan Foundation found in April. This means the entire country’s global warming policy was “based on an outright scam,” which ended up sending the cash to international criminals, according to retired New Zealand physicist Dr. George Preddey. New Zealand’s government purchased 86 million tons of fradulent CO2 offset from an international criminal scam in Ukraine.
In 2014, prosecutors in Italy investigated a $1.4 billion carbon trading scam that funded terrorist groups operating in the Middle East. A report by the Stockholm Environment Institute showed that many offsets are fraudulent and have “significantly undermined” efforts to prevent global warming. It is believed that offsets may have actually increased CO2 emissions by 600 million tonnes. An article about carbon offsets in The Atlantic says “[w]hen the product is invisible, the cons are endless.”
Even environmentalists, such as the Executive Director of Greenpeace Annie Leonard, have called cap-and-trade a “multi-trillion dollar carbon racket” that creates “real incentives to cheat” and is a “dangerous distraction.” Even environmentalists who agree with the idea of cap-and-trade admit that actual examples of it fail because they “fall short of creating real price pressures due to its closeness to baseline emissions.”
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