Why Carbon Offsets Don’t Work: A Greenwashed Scam Exposed! By James Reed

Carbon offsets have been sold as a silver bullet for climate change, a way to "neutralise" emissions by paying for reductions elsewhere, like planting trees or funding clean energy. But the truth is out: they don't work. EnergyAustralia, one of Australia's biggest polluters, admitted in 2024 that their "Go Neutral" offset program, sold to over 400,000 households, doesn't undo the harm of burning fossil fuels. Insiders like Professor Andrew Macintosh, who helped design Australia's carbon credit system, have called it a fraud. Even the European Parliament has banned offset-based "carbon neutral" claims. So why do offsets fail so spectacularly? I examine the evidence and expose the scam for what it is.

The promise of carbon offsets is simple: emit CO₂ here, pay for an equivalent reduction there, and you're "carbon neutral." In reality, the system is riddled with flaws that make it ineffective at best and fraudulent at worst. Here are the core reasons offsets don't deliver:

For an offset to work, it must fund a project that wouldn't have happened without your money, something called "additionality." If the project was already going to happen, you're not reducing emissions; you're just slapping a green label on business-as-usual. A 2016 study of the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) found 85% of projects had a "low likelihood" of being additional. Wind farms, hydro plants, and efficient lighting projects, common offset types, were often already planned or profitable without offset funds. In Australia, Human-Induced Regeneration (HIR) projects issued 24.6 million carbon credits, worth $763 million, for land that showed "very little (and often negative) tree cover change," per a 2023 study. You're paying for projects that were happening anyway, not new climate solutions.

CO₂ from fossil fuels supposedly lingers in the atmosphere for centuries, but many offsets, especially forest-based ones, are short-lived. Trees can burn in wildfires, be logged, or die from drought, releasing stored carbon. A Cambodian offset project lost 42% of its forest during its lifespan. In California, a 2020 wildfire destroyed 100,000 acres of an offset project, releasing 3.3 million metric tons of carbon. A 2023 investigation into Verra, the world's leading offset certifier, found 94% of its rainforest credits, used by companies like Disney and Shell, were "phantom credits" with no climate benefit. Temporary tree storage can't offset permanent emissions, making the whole scheme a house of cards.

Carbon offset projects rely on shaky maths. Developers often use inflated baselines, claiming they "saved" forests or reduced emissions compared to a hypothetical scenario where destruction was inevitable. But many forests were never at risk. A 2023 study of 300 offset projects found most failed basic carbon accounting standards, over-crediting developers for non-existent reductions. Verra's rainforest credits were 90% ineffective, yet companies bought them to claim "net zero." In Australia, Professor Andrew Macintosh, former head of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, estimated 70–80% of carbon credits lacked integrity. It's a system built on guesswork and exaggeration, not science.

Offsets let polluters keep polluting while claiming to be green. EnergyAustralia's "Go Neutral" program allowed customers to pay extra for "carbon neutral" power, but it didn't reduce emissions from their coal and gas plants. Companies like BP and Shell use offsets to brand themselves as "clean energy pioneers" without cutting their fossil fuel output. Barbara Haya, a UC Berkeley researcher, argues that offsets delay real decarbonisation, why invest in "sustainable" fuels if you can buy cheap credits? This moral hazard undermines climate progress, letting high-emission industries dodge accountability while communities near their plants suffer.

The Nation First article highlights EnergyAustralia's quiet retreat from "Go Neutral" in 2024, first pausing new sign-ups in September and then announcing a full phase-out by March 2025. They didn't apologise, they got caught. Legal pressure and public scrutiny forced their hand. Professor Macintosh, who helped build Australia's carbon credit system, blew the whistle in 2022, calling it a "fraud on the environment, taxpayers, and private buyers." Senator Malcolm Roberts, in a 2024 speech, slammed the $5.5 billion carbon market as a "scam designed to transfer wealth" to corporations and global institutions. Even GreenCollar, Australia's largest offset developer, abandoned the federal scheme, with its CEO citing "hijacked" integrity. When the architects and players admit it's broken, you know it's bad.

The carbon offset racket has roots in questionable motives. Maurice Strong, an oil tycoon turned UN insider, pushed emissions trading through the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Far from a green crusader, Strong made millions in petroleum before pivoting to climate policy, creating a market that enriched banks like Rothschild and Bank of America. The Nation First article notes his ties to the UN and his vision of a "new planetary order," funded partly by oil money. This wasn't about saving the planet, it was about control and profit. The global carbon market, now worth $2 billion, thrives on fear and compliance, not results.

The scam isn't just Australian. The European Parliament banned "carbon neutral" claims based on offsets in 2024, citing their ineffectiveness. Groups like Greenpeace and Parents for Climate, while still pushing climate action, admit offsets are a distraction. Yet governments and corporations keep propping up the system. In Australia, the Climate Active program still certifies "carbon neutral" products based on offsets, despite the evidence. Meanwhile, countries like China and India expand coal and steel production while the West cripples its industries with green regulations. The hypocrisy is glaring.

Carbon offsets don't work because they're built on flawed premises: projects that don't add reductions, temporary fixes that don't last, accounting that's more fiction than fact, and a system that lets polluters off the hook. The Nation First article calls for a royal commission to investigate every dollar and name behind this fraud, and that's a start. But more is needed:

End Offset Certification: Abolish programs like Climate Active that greenwash products with meaningless credits.

Demand Transparency: Require independent audits of offset projects to prove additionality and permanence.

Focus on Real Solutions: reject the climate change illusion and maintain fossil fuel use and state-of-the-art nuclear.

Hold Profiteers Accountable: Investigate banks, corporations, and bureaucrats who've profited from this scam.

Carbon offsets are a lie sold to a public desperate to "do something" about climate change, itself a scam. EnergyAustralia's admission, insider whistleblowers, and decades of evidence prove it: offsets don't reduce emissions, they just move money around. From Maurice Strong's UN schemes to today's greenwashed corporations, the system enriches the powerful while delivering nothing for the environment. It's time to tear it down!

https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/the-carbon-con-is-over

EnergyAustralia admits offsets are a scam — carbon neutral was never real.

The system's own architect called it a fraud years ago.

Politicians and profiteers kept pushing it for power and cash.

Maurice Strong built this global con with oil money and UN backing.

It's time to burn the racket down and expose every name behind it.

After years of flogging their "Go Neutral" product to over 400,000 Australian families, EnergyAustralia — the country's third-largest polluter — just confessed the truth: carbon offsets don't work.

Let that sink in. They sold you the illusion that you were buying "carbon neutral" power. You weren't. You were buying guilt relief. A marketing gimmick. A green sticker slapped on dirty coal and gas. Now, under legal fire, they've finally said it out loud — offsets don't undo the harm of burning fossil fuels. Their own words.

But here's what makes it worse: they've known this for years.

Back in 2022, Professor Andrew Macintosh — the man who ran the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee — blew the whistle on the whole scam. He wasn't some fringe critic. He was an insider. He was the architect of the system. And even he said it was broken beyond repair.

In his words, 70 to 80 percent of Australian carbon credits were "devoid of integrity." He called it a fraud on the environment, a fraud on taxpayers, and a fraud on unwitting private buyers.

And yet, for two years, this government — along with the banks, the bureaucrats, the climate cartel and the greenwashed corporates — kept pushing the lie. Why? Because it was profitable. Because it was never about saving the planet. It was always about cashing in.

One brave voice in Parliament called out this rot a year ago. Senator Malcolm Roberts, in a scathing 2024 speech, laid it all bare — and if you haven't read his words in full, you should:

"Carbon dioxide credits are a scam and an absolute fraud, and the Greens agree with One Nation on this. Yes, you heard that correctly… While the Greens and One Nation may agree on the integrity issues with carbon dioxide credits, here's where I leave them behind: there is no reason to reduce our output of carbon dioxide or trade credits for it.

Carbon dioxide credits can never have integrity because they are a scam designed to transfer wealth from the pockets of everyday Australians and their families and small businesses to the bank accounts of billionaire net zero scam artists and parasitic multinationals sucking on the financial payout from climate fraud and associated financial scams.

This is a $5.5 billion market that's being fabricated, in part to give the UN income, ultimately. As usual, they enlist parasites who benefit while pushing UN policy for them. For example, the major banks. Rothschild Australia, the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch had on their advisory boards in this country at the time the CSIRO chief executive, Dr Megan Clark — a conflict of interest?

The Chubb review — a whitewash. It addressed nothing of substance. No evidence. No analysis. It did not disclose what evidence it relied on. The public is simply expected to trust that the evidence exists. Maybe the dog ate the evidence for breakfast.

There has never been — there never is — any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that human carbon dioxide is warming the planet. There is not any from the CSIRO… not from the Bureau of Meteorology… not from the United Nations.

There is no basis for the policy on which the carbon dioxide credits are based. No cost-benefit analysis. No business case. Just consensus, spin and subsidies."

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Senator Roberts is right. This isn't policy. This is climate religion — backed by junk science, hidden motives, and a money trail that leads straight to the same global institutions and energy giants who profit from both fossil fuels and renewables.

And let's not forget where this madness began.

The godfather of the carbon credit scheme, Maurice Strong, wasn't an environmentalist. He was an oil tycoon, a UN insider, and a convicted crook. He made millions off petroleum, then pivoted to green politics and created a new racket in the form of emissions trading. He didn't change sides. He created both. And behind the scenes, he pushed for world government, new taxes, and even mystical New Age nonsense about a planetary realignment. You can't make this stuff up.

Strong believed a catastrophic collapse would usher in a new global order. He even bought up a 200,000-acre ranch in Colorado — a site he claimed, after being advised by a mystic, would become the "centre for a new planetary order" following worldwide environmental and economic catastrophe. He founded the Manitou Foundation there, building temples to various world religions and pouring money into spiritual experiments. While Australians were being lectured about cutting emissions, Strong was plotting the spiritual rebirth of humanity — funded by oil money and enforced through UN climate policy.

It was Strong who lit the match that became the firestorm of carbon trading — a multi-trillion-dollar market that sells make-believe environmental outcomes and prints money for the rich.

That isn't "saving the planet." That's saving globalist power structures, propped up by junk markets and greenwashed propaganda.

The radical green fringe has caught on too. Groups like Greenpeace and Parents for Climate are waking up to the fact that the system is rigged. But they still believe in the dream. They think if either they can just fix the offsets or get businesses to decarbonise further, everything will turn out just fine.

What they don't understand is this: the entire thing is a con. The myth of catastrophic man-made climate catastrophe was politically useful — because it allowed governments and corporations to build a brand new market, one backed not by value but by fear. It allowed energy giants like Shell and BP to rebrand as "clean energy pioneers" while they raked in profits from both ends — selling fossil fuels and flipping carbon credits.

It let banks and bureaucrats create entire departments around "climate compliance," "carbon neutral certification," and "ESG finance." It birthed a climate aristocracy — rich, untouchable, and wholly unaccountable. All of it built on a lie.

And we've been footing the bill. Through taxes. Through inflated power prices. Through regulations that crush farmers and manufacturers. Through the gutting of our industries and the hollowing out of our sovereignty.

While China builds coal plants, we shut ours down. While India ramps up steel production, we outsource ours. And while other nations laugh behind closed doors, we're told to give up beef, ditch our utes, and pay extra for "carbon neutral" rubbish that means nothing.

And as this farce unravels, let's not forget how EnergyAustralia handled its "Go Neutral" withdrawal. In September 2024, they quietly stopped offering the product to new customers. Then in December, they announced they'd phase it out by March 2025. No fanfare. No media. No admission. They knew it was a fraud and tried to bury it before the courts dragged it into the light. They weren't sorry — they were scrambling.

Even the carbon market kingpins are abandoning ship. GreenCollar, Australia's largest developer of carbon offset projects, has walked away from the federal scheme. Their CEO admitted that the industry has become too risky — not because it doesn't work, but because the truth is finally coming out. In his words, the scheme has been "hijacked" by activists. But he didn't deny the underlying problem: no integrity, no trust, no future.

And overseas, the lie's already been called out. The European Parliament has banned marketing products as 'carbon neutral' if based on offsets — because the evidence is clear: they don't work. They never did. Europe has dumped the lie. Australia's still certifying it.

We must abolish Climate Active, the federal government's green stamp program that allows companies to market their products and services as "carbon neutral" — often based purely on offsets. It has become a tool for greenwashing, not genuine decarbonisation. Dismantle the offsets market. End taxpayer subsidies to carbon cowboys and ESG parasites. And above all, we must reject net zero — not just because it's unworkable, but because it's a lie.

A royal commission into the carbon credit racket must be launched — with full powers to subpoena, investigate, and expose. Every dollar must be accounted for. Every bureaucrat and boardroom must be made to answer.

Australians deserve a future built on energy independence, economic security, and scientific integrity — not superstition, spin, and financial fraud.

Enough green lies.

No more indulgences. No more climate clergy. No more silence."