Environmental Impact of Offsetting

Short-Term Impact

Offsets directly impact the environment by removing or avoiding the entrance of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, which accelerates climate change. For example, forest preservation increases the amount of trees that would be on Earth by preventing them from being deforested, which increases the amount of greenhouse gases sequestered by the trees, which are a natural carbon sink.

That direct, tangible reduction of harmful emissions in the atmosphere is desperately needed. However, the offset market also creates a long-term impact on the environment.

Long-Term Impact

The long-term impact of carbon offsets comes from the funding that the market provides.

The cycle of “do, profit, reinvest” is an incredibly powerful flywheel that built much of the world as it is today. By monetizing emission reductions, carbon offsets create that flywheel for climate impact. As projects grow over time, the profit they earn can be reinvested into bigger and more ambitious emissions reduction plans that can achieve greater and greater levels of climate impact.

Additionally, as the offset market grows, it can shift the profit motive from climate harm to climate impact. Many of the world’s most important natural carbon sinks, such as the Amazon, are located in countries with cheaper labor. It wouldn’t take much growth in the market cap of the carbon markets to be large enough to compete with logging or agricultural interests seeking to deforest. Once offsets become lucrative enough, it will be more profitable in many areas of the world to preserve nature rather than export it, which is a massive fundamental shift in our fight to protect the climate.

Relevance to API

The misconception about carbon offsets is that they only represent a small reduction of emissions. This could not be further from the truth; the real impact that carbon offsets provide goes far beyond the actual emissions they avoid. By being a scalable financial instrument, the carbon markets provide the infrastructure for a financial flywheel effect that has the potential to channel untold amounts of money into clean energy, conservation, and waste reduction.

Our philosophy behind the decision to build out this API is directly tied to that impact route. Carbon markets represent more than the sum of their contents, and we believe that people should have open access to them. By using our API, you’re creating some of the carbon markets’ scaffolding that is necessary to scale climate action from the private sector.