UN Condemned for Whale Offsets: Privatizing Nature for Climate Fraud
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 NOVEMBER 2021
Contact:
Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP, USA) English +1.716.364.1188 an**@gl******************.org
Cassandra Smithies, author of SAVE THE WHALES… from the carbon market (Scotland) English, Spanish, French ba*******@ya***.com
Glasgow, Scotland – Sacred whales, the biggest mammals of the world, the leviathans of the ocean, are at risk of being reduced to a giant carbon offset business, which could, in fact, speed up the extinction of whales, denounced activists from all over the world at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow.
According to the Global Justice Ecology Project’s exposé SAVE the Whales… from the carbon market! “Instead of cutting greenhouse gas emissions at source, polluters want to pretend they can use whales as sponges for their pollution. The United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, 41 countries including the USA, gas and oil industries and “conservation” NGOs want to perversely turn the last remaining whales into whale offsets for carbon markets – a grotesque greenwash.”
Ivonne Yanez of Acción Ecológica of Ecuador said whale offsets are shocking. “Whale offsets are the epitome of the false solutions being promoted here in Glasgow at the United Nations climate change summit. This is privatization of Nature at its most absurd. Whale offsets are part of ‘Net Zero’ emissions, decarbonization and ‘Nature-based Solutions’, which are polluters’ smokescreens for business as usual and extracting every last drop of oil. The Paris Agreement is not a climate agreement, it’s a trade agreement to build the global carbon market and launch carbon as the new currency.”
“The UN wants to use elephants and whales for carbon offsets. Will humans be next?” asked renowned Nigerian activist Nnimmo Bassey, Alternative Nobel Prize winner and judge of the International Nature’s Rights Tribunal held at Strathclyde University. “In Africa, the UN’s carbon offset schemes with land are driving a continent grab for carbon colonialism. Now they want to convert our mighty elephants into carbon dumps so the oil industry can cook the continent. We aren’t having it.”
Casey Camp-Horinek, Councilwoman and Hereditary Drumkeeper of the Womens’ Scalp Dance Society, of the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma was succinct. “Whale offsets violate the Sacred.”
Cassandra Smithies, author of SAVE THE WHALES… from the carbon market explained that “The IMF wants you to help pay whale killers, including the gas and oil industries, not to kill whales so they can be used as carbon offsets, even though those very same whale killers also pollute and cause climate change, which in turn kills whales. Whales are not vacuum cleaners for corporate pollution.”
A possible precedent for whale offsets is oil giant Chevron’s $A13-million-dollar environmental offset package, which allowed Chevron to get carbon credits for monitoring and researching the impact on endangered whales of its destructive dredging and construction of Wheatstone Liquid Natural Gas plant in Australia.
