Carbon Offsets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Proud to say I am officially carbon neutral thanks to Oliver Offsets!

As an ecologist, well done John for explaining that it is very hard to achieve zero emissions. Also it matters whether the trees planted belong to that area are exotic or native. That pine tree in africa was a weird decision,pines are NOT found in africa.Planting exotic trees which invade native trees will only damage the land. Offsets are just a short cut, the solution should start with phasing out fossil fuels!

Nice job Sam!!

I remember learning about how at one point the catholic church sold vouchers for prayers to people, so that they could effectively "pay away" their sins and guilt to get into heaven. The simlilarities to our modern carbon offsets is eerily similar, imo.

The extent these big corporations go through just to not do anything is insane. We are all doomed.

By god this segment is good. So well written. So impactful. Congrats to the whole writing staff.

Seeing John Oliver quoting research done by Wendover Productions is amazing. This what new media landscape has become and it’s sweet.

I was hanging out with my pet rabbit when I decided to watch this on my phone. The moment John started talking, my rabbit hopped over and started watching the video intently. I’m not sure whether it was the subject content or hearing John Oliver’s voice but she was completely engrossed in it for the entire 23 minutes. So John, you clearly have a new fan. She will be tuning in with me every Sunday from now on.

I'm so glad he did an episode on this! He is absolutely hitting the nail on the head! Another thing to note is the obvious fact that trees take time to grow!!!! Many species of trees aren't fully grown after a decade!! And in the early stages, they require maintenance!!! And planting baby forests will OBVIOUSLY not immediately sequester the same amount of carbon as a forest full of mature trees!!!!! time to face up - YES you actually need to STOP polluting!!!!

Thanks, John Oliver, for entertaining and informing us at the same time! Keep up the great work! You truly deserve every Emmy that you have won and will win!

Was never expecting to hear John Oliver mention Hawk Mountain. It's a gorgeous hike spot, especially in the fall. There have been petitions to get public transit to run there to cut down on the number of people driving cars there. Hopefully it'll eventually go through

Much Love to John Oliver and his team. This show is one of the many reasons Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has won the Emmy Award for best show since 2015. We need more John Oliver's! And much love to John Stewart for your gift of whit and talent in having John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper as part of your team....a breath of fresh air...

On behalf of Ireland, I'd like to thank John and everyone who donates for saving our whales and dolphins, we were unsure if they'd have enough trees to live in throughout the winter.

Lastweektonight is the most informative of all night shows. Hands up to Oliver and his team!

saying that "not chopping down a tree" offsets carbon emissions is like saying "not burning down your house" is investment in real estate

I did a literal spit take, for the first time of my life, at the "he only does that to people with severe illnesses" part.

Well on the one hand, I think that it's great that environmental awareness is finally (for the last few years) "cool" and that companies are pandering to it. I hope that it will also trickle down to politics a bit more. But of course they were going to manipulate the process for profit - it's what they do, and nobody should have expected any different. And John's team has done an excellent job of researching this. Of course it should be obvious that just planting trees is just a very small part of the overall solution.

I love John and his team. Their research is excellent and arguments are insanely strong. Can't watch too many in a row or I get depressed, but love them anyway. Humans are the absolute worst.

"that violently British man did a pretty good job of explaining the concept" can also sum up his whole show

"When you buy an offset, so you can pollute more, and that offset is bullshit, you're now actively making things worse" - I'm frightened by the fact, that this is so very true, and that big companies spend lots of money - with good intentions - on making things worse...

This really is a continuous problem of magic thinking. We want solutions that makes us feel like we're doing the right thing, but also requires zero effort or sacrifice.

John Oliver always sounds a little relieved when his jokes hit

Honestly, this whole offsetting system always sounded even worse to me if the customer got to pay for it.
Oh yeah? You ALLOW ME to pay so YOU can handle YOUR waste? Great. Thanks a lot. Next time I am eating out, I am gonna ask the restaurant if they want me to pay them 2€, so I get to take one bag full of their trash with me.

For the past 30 years the federal government has paid a friend of mine not to grow corn on his hundred acre pot of red in upstate New York. Even if he has never grown called and the man who owned it before him never grew corn on the land either. The reason he knew about this was because men who have farms in the area told him about it and they don't grow corn either

This is great! I was waiting for a mention of the fact that the proposed tree planting programs are changing established open ecosystems like grasslands and Savannas particularly in Africa within high rainfall regions. Unfortunately these open ecosystems are fire dependent, when these trees are planted, they are likely to be burnt down by wildfires releasing all the carbon (e.g. look at Cathedral Peak research Catchments in SouthAfrica)...yet neglected is the fact that these open systems, in their current state, have high plant diversity dominated by plants adapted to fires e.g. grasses, which store large amounts of carbon in the soil. Changing these systems threatens the stored carbon in the soil. I agree with Oliver, carbon offsets are making the problem worse!

One of the best things about John's work is he and his staff actually DO the things that prove the BS is really BS. Gotta love that.

God I love this man. 💙💙
He's so smart and he uses it to benefit mankind. The human race. ❤️❤️

I always like to tell myself that even if we can’t force these mega corporations to actually stop destroying our plant in the end even the mega rich are going to regret their choices when they can’t leave their futuristic mansion domes without an oxygen tank

Straight out of university (back in 2012), I worked with some "alternative" investment companies that sold carbon credits. Safe to say that they weren't worth the paper they were written on. A potentially good idea that was completely ruined by greed

One of the main issues with "net zero" or "offsets" is the fact that it often completely disregards the time factor. You can cut don a tree and burn it within a few hours, but having that same tree grow back to it's former size (and thus Carbon content) can take decades or even centuries. That fact is usually not prominently displayed in those net zero calculations...for obvious reasons...

As true as this segment is there really is a large amount of Reforestation that can, and should be, pursued. Most of Ireland and Britain were once covered with forests but are now not. It wouldn't save the planet but it's still worth rebuilding those forests.

John Oliver is absolutely fantastic and this show is a beam of light in a world that gets darker every day.. thank you

The green power house as mentioned in the "Need to Grow" documentary is the best solution I've seen. A closed loop generator that sequesters carbon, grows algae & herbs, and creates biochar.

Offset licensing companies should be regulated and audited by the EPA!

Carbon offsetting is the serial killer equivalent of being paid not to kill a victim you'd not planned on killing in the first place

So glad to see Wendover Productions get a shout out in this episode. Wendover did such a great job breaking down how the scams operate and why they're doing so much more harm than good.

That unfaithful wife bit was golden. That burn was beyond what was needed to start a fire

John is an international treasure for the like he shines on these things. If modern civilisation ever had a Tombstone, it would read, here lies, people who could, but who didn’t”

I love how HBO is using WENDOVER Productions and third party KRclipr's as sources. Love to support the creators bringing facts and details to light.

There was a bit of controversy in my home town in rural New Zealand American companies bought farm land to plant red wood trees for carbon credits the problem was that the farm land is in a large flood prone valley so when they get harvested the debris is likely to cause significant damage to the towns in that valley

Another thing I did not know about making the world worse and there's no hope and nothing I can do about it. Thanks, John.

I am so glad Oliver touched on the fact that a lot of the 'offsets' that are being purchased are done so on the backs of landowners in developing countries. It's another financial shell game for companies to keep doing what they would have been doing anyway and get a marketing boost out of it. The only way to curb emissions is to stop emitting, period.

Thanks John for raising the flag and putting the spotlight on carbon markets so they go through better scrutiny in the future! I missed at least a brief reference to the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) and the Taskforce Scaling up Voluntary Carbon Markets, that clearly state that voluntary offsets SHOULD be seeked and purchased by corporates only AFTER reducing own emissions directly. So you offset only what you cannot avoid & reduce directly on your own value chain (i.e. INSET); and you should start offsetting only AFTER you have maxed out insetting. This is the strong ongoing trend amongst ALL global voluntary corporate reporting frameworks and offsetting standards (except maybe the American, ACR and CAR) are rapidly going towards more stringency and minimum common denominators that clearly state this. The problem of course is that as this is voluntary it clearly lacks enforcement as it's primarily self-regulated. For compliance markers on the other side there had been a bit of "hot air" in the past, but in the EU ETS for example it has been proven that caps have significantly reduced emissions compared to the business as usual scenario without the cap and trade program.

There may have once been 4,000 times as many trees. Humans have been busy. Read that when Europeans first came to North America, the forest was so big and dense that it was said that a squirrel could travel from Maine or Georgia to the Mississippi River without ever having to touch the ground, and that there were many that a dozen men holding hands couldn’t reach around. Those Paul Bunyan stories are about how much timber was removed starting in the precolonial period to build ships and exported back to Europe, where most of the trees were long gone. Ireland was called the green isle because it was once a dense forest.
People can live where there are trees. It used to be that you could tell where the most wealthy neighborhoods were because they had tree-lined streets and trees surrounding their houses because it provided shade, privacy, and fresh air.
The neighborhood we moved to in 1988 used to have treelined streets. Not a wealthy neighborhood, just wel designed in the age before air conditioning was ubiquitous here. Since we’ve been here probably a third of the trees have been removed. It’s almost always new people. They liked the look of the trees when they bought the house but feel obsessed about raking leaves and are worried about branches falling on their roofs or their cars and instead of getting the big branches trimmed they just have the whole tree removed. My partner and I have made a project when dog-walking of checking out stumps of newly cut trees and rarely is there indication of rot or any reason not to save the tree.
Was scared when we heard chain saws at our next door neighbor’s house a few years ago, but was happy to see that they got it trimmed back. There had been branches that I could not have put my arms around that reached over their house, tethering driveway, our driveway, and the street out front. It looked like broccoli with the florets cut off when they were done, but the next summer the tree once again shaded the front of their house.

- Guys, we're going to kill ourselves through pollution.
- You're right, how can we make money from all this tho?

As a 3rd year studying applied ecology and wildlife ecology, I have actually found some interesting research suggesting that whales take at least a few tones of CO2 from the atmosphere, and their protection may be added to carbon offset plans. Just a little more info in regards to the whale bit. 😊🦑

This is very accurate and complete. I'm an environmental science/policy major, he basically covered everything wrong with current offset mechanisms since the Kyoto protocol lol
You can do some kind of "true" offsetting, but it would involve capturing CO2 from a polluting plant, or from the air, and then storing the CO2 underground. Which is, as of today, very very very expensive.

I love how giant corporations have convinced us that we are the problem with emissions...and not...you know..the giant corporations.

Also many of the offset such as tree planting use the cheapest most efficient short term method. This is bad because they often don’t use local trees and productive ecosystems don’t pop up around it and in the long run usally absorbs less carbon anyways.

Kudos to Scott Kirby for speaking the truth and not hiding behind a marketing message like other CEOs. Not his fault he has to play the game everyone else has collectively set up.

Lmao omg he had me dying on the ugly tree bit i like watching John Oliver he has such a great delivery and always gets deep into the details of the stories he covers.

It’s so unfortunate the direction that carbon offsets are going.
If we put this money toward the initial cost of geothermal power plants (for example), that would genuinely offset carbon AND lower people’s energy bills.

We need a solution that corporations can't buy their way out of like they do with everything else. It's so frustrating.

Good to see John using Wendover Productions as an example to explain offsets. Wendover Productions's carbon offsets video was a great one.

A lot of what John says is true! Carbon reductions are obviously better than carbon offsets, and that the registry’s don’t actually do a good job managing which credits are actually effective or legit. BUT, NCX is truly a pioneer in the carbon offset space. It’s sad to see John not cover anything in regards to that or the diligent and passionate people who work in that sphere because that actually do care and want to make a difference. I’ve watched so much John Oliver-and still will-just make sure to do your own research y’all.

This was an extremely needed video, thank you!

Finally a late night show host talking in detail about the climate.

those set designers deserve an award the tree scenery made for that skit was so gorgeous and a lot for a minute long joke

Love that Wendover Productions is getting some big time recognition. They produce excellent content on that channel.

As someone who works in this field I want to point out that verified Carbon Offests projects (verified by VSC or CAR) have a rigorous approval process and are 100% measurable. There are good projects out there that support the environment and help drive market demand for renewable/sustainable solutions. Im not saying offests are the solution, however, they are an important final component of an integrated sustainability plans that cannot reach net zero for several years while their carbon reduction methods are being developed.

The cartoon King of the Hill had an episode with carbon offsets. Strickland the owner of the propane company bought the offset rights to a forest that was already protected.

If everyone bought all 10 000 credits and given each credit is 5 minutes of not cutting down a tree, John has to only wait 50 000 minutes or 3 and a half days (approximately) to cut down 1 tree, truly amazing👏

The Ryanair app has a 'green mode' where it just changes the background colour to green. Literally green washing themselves whilst doing absolutely nothing

Aight lets take some time to appreciate that John Oliver has given extra credibility to Wendover Production by citing his videos.

Carbon offsets feel like a very "pay your way into heaven" approach to solving climate change

Keep in mind this is mostly an issue in the American market. In Europe, UK, Australia and some parts of Asia, carbon credits are required by law for companies that have a significant impact on CO2 emissions. If a company goes over their carbon quota they are then forced to buy carbon credits from a certified vendor such as forestry plantations (that wont be cut down at all and are instead used for alternative productions such as fruits creating both profit and are used as carbon sequesters

The fact there isn't enough space for trees could finally force markets to realize how destructive they are as megacorps bid with each other and with poor people for tree space

I know there's no chance it'll ever happen, but I wish John would cover the Rail crisis! Workers are dying weekly driving home from exhaustion, and the Railroads continue to buy out congress and convince them that it's labors fault freight isn't moving.

I think Ecosia is one of the only companies to have gotten tree planting right.

While that tree is large and insane looking, when I lived in Windsor Ontario, there was a truly stupendously bad looking tree, pretty sure it was a cherry tree, that not only grew crooked and was probably 50 years old (despite being ~5ft tall), the tree literally went sideways and was crowned by a single branch, going sideways, that didn't even point up (it wasn't even a leader), the trunk looked like it was made out of tree warts, and it had ONE BRANCH, with only a tiny number of leaves, and it seemed as if this tree had been like this for a considerable amount of time, quite likely many years. Anyways, this was the weirdest tree I ever saw.

Nice to see the use of Wendover in this. He did a great video about the Carbon Offsets scam

Some extra problems not (extensively) mentioned in this video:
- People are getting rewarded for planting new trees. This has allegedly led people to cut down existing trees to make room for the new ones. Which is counter-productive to say the least.
- The type of tree matters as well. If you plant fast-growing trees in an area that doesn't support them food & water-wise, they will degrade the ground even further and then die, leaving basically a desert.
It's really exhausting, I know, but each 'solution' so far just seems to be the new problem. Just another industry to make money off of.

John's criticism on inferior jurisdictions' inferior decision-making is very satisfying to listen to 🤤

With absolutely minimal fairness, whales do hold a lot of carbon just by the nature of them being absolutely massive carbon-based life forms. But also... wasn't aware the airlines were whaling now

I'd encourage everyone to watch the Wendover Productions video John references here. It's on KRclip and actually does a way better job explaining the problem than John does tbh. In this case, Last Week Tonight could have posted the link to that video, called it a day, and would probably have reduced their carbon footprint in the process.

At this stage, we have to use all the tools we have. If population wasn't growing, and the average man wasn't getting in debt to keep up with the Joneses, voluntary carbon offsets would be playing a positive role. When we point a finger at someone, three fingers are pointed back at us - people seem to forget that!

Taking on corporations is why I love LWT so much. Many shows are afraid of calling them out, fearing losing sponsors (ie. money), but John Oliver just goes straight for the their throats in his truth telling.

Of course there will be loop holes as in everything. It's important to point out that offsets are not perfect. Still, I believe they are important and should be used as much as possible (not instead of reducing emissions of course, but in addition). Btw when will we have "negative emissions" as a goal instead of net zero?

Last Week Tonight, your reporting was magnificent. Thank you for putting effort into investigating and sharing your findings. Outstanding!!

This is so true. Also how big tech companies talk about how they are helping reduce pollution. But keep making product from plastic rare earth metal etc.

The best would be to set up a US federal offset regulation.
btw to take out wood from a forest and not burn it, but use it to build long lasting things like houses , while keeping fast growing young trees to suck up carbon may be a way to bind carbon for a long time.

Thank you for the information on carbon offsets. I am a donator and sent them an email expressing my disappointment. Here it is.
Hello
I recently watched the John Oliver show on August 21 regarding Carbon Offsets. Needless to say I was very upset about what they said about the Nature Conservancy and plan to remove NC from my will.
Their response
Thank you for your email and for your generous support of The Nature Conservancy as a Legacy Club member. We appreciate you reaching out about the recent John Oliver segment on August 21st and are sorry that you feel the way you do about our organization. The points made regarding TNC during the segment mentioned carbon markets focused on US projects and unfortunately extrapolated information to the entire global market. We believe an important inaccuracy in the segment was the implication that businesses use offsets as the only solution to reduce their emissions. We are clear that the purchase of carbon credits by businesses should only be used as a temporary, limited solution for difficult-to-achieve reductions within a company’s carbon footprint. The purchase of carbon credits can only complement the decarbonization of business operations. It cannot replace it. Carbon Markets are just one tool that can help accelerate the implementation of Natural Climate Solutions, and they are a small proportion of the natural climate solutions that TNC works on. It is also important to note that carbon accounting science and best practice has evolved significantly in recent years and is expected to continue to do so in coming years.
As a global conservation leader that has pioneered carbon mitigation and conservation finance strategies over the years, TNC has the experience, reach, and responsibility to forge new levels of excellence and help ensure all carbon markets continue to make real and significant contributions to the fight against the climate crisis. The piece included a mix of legitimate criticisms that TNC shares as well as areas of improvement needed in the markets..
Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like additional information about carbon markets, or any of our work. Thanks again for all that you do for conservation.
John Stapleton| Legacy Club Stewardship Manager

As a Ugandan, I think the effects of offset solutions being sent to the third world and developing countries are felt firsthand by the very occupants of that country, which actually emit negligible amounts of carbon dioxide. They face the wrath of governments trying to implement a project that solves nothing without knowing that the source of funding comes from the industrialized world. The Swedish company will abandon the project, but the local Ugandans will not get their land back.

"What could I do to make the environmental impact of my cross-atlantic flight less drastic?"
"Pay the Kerosine-burning company even more money, they will figure it out"
"But their entire business relies on burning Kerosine!"
"Do you like trees?"
"I don't think you take the climate crisis seriously!"
"If you want, you can also carbon-offset the breath of your hamster"
"What would I have to do"
"Pay me money"
"How is your solution to every environmental issue involving me paying you or another company money?"
"Capitalism is a great thing, right!"

Imagine Ikea offsetting their emissions by agreeing to plant trees which they'll cut for lumber when they grow sufficiently.

I love it when I know that John is about to waste a whole ton of HBO's money!

The videos are really entertaining and instructive, however sometimes its hard for non-native speakers to understand everything said. English subtitles would be great!

I wasn’t expecting Wendover Productions in a John Oliver segment but I’m absolutely here for it!

Congratulations to Wendover Productions! Their video on carbon offsets is really well done!

Once again, a trully-needed show!

If profits are the priority, what if a scaling systems were put in place that could give companies progressively higher fees based off of how high their carbon emissions go?

Fun fact, when a tree is cut it gives back the CO2 it had stored. Trees are more of a bank account for CO2 than a waste station.

man, John Oliver's writers really know his audience these days

Whales actually bind a lot of carbon, making whale preservation and supporting them to breed very effective against climate change. They're basically little forests swimming through the seas. Additionally, with rising levels of water, the seas will cover more of the land, making carbon binding in the ecosystems under water even more important

Any time John says "practically anyone can set up...." I know he knows because they DID it.

The funny thing is how often this pattern repeats. Hey, we have something that's already existing or happening, can we get credit for doing it? It works for carbon offsets, but it also works for real estate development in underinvested areas.

Another thing that I don't think ever got mentioned that is severely wrong with carbon offsets is the fact that they don't ever really impact the area that got polluted in the first place. Even if they worked perfectly to reduce the GLOBAL amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they don't help when things get polluted on a local level. As a result, you get areas like cities that get harder and harder to breathe in (think Shanghai) and other areas that are practically untouched by humans. Add to the fact that a lot of tree planting is just introducing invasive species or creating forests in former grasslands, prairies, and savannahs, thus DESTROYING the local ecosystem. You got yourself a really stupid idea that is doing a lot more harm than good.

It really amazes how, much effort those company do to legally be able to say they are carbon neutral, while not even trying to actively do something that would actually help. All that money they throw at pointless things, that could be pooled and have real climate impact.. It's insane.

HBO’s Ice On Fire is what you should know. Incredible science, explained so clearly. Must watch!

WOW!
Corrupt corporations will find a way to ruin ANYTHING!
Even their own carbon offsets!