A report by the World Rainforest Movement details the violence villagers in eastern Uganda are subjected to just for trying to access their own land which is “protected” by armed park rangers guarding a carbon offset project for a Dutch company. Villagers have been beaten and shot at “in defense of” FACE Foundation’s project, the credits of which are sold to Amnesty International, the Body Shop, and others.
As Grist’s Julia Olmstead points out, this is another example of the questionable efficacy of offset projects and the misconception that we can neutralize our carbon emissions by throwing money at a third-party business.
I mean really, whether it's carbon offsets, biofuels, coal-to-liquid, whatever, how long will we continue to think that we can buy our way out of this mess? The cost of our refusal to make actual changes to our lifestyles is beyond our imagining.
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