Climate policy increasingly relies on numbers. Emissions are counted, balanced, offset, delayed, amortized, and projected decades into the future. This numerical framework is often presented as objective and scientific — a neutral way to guide decisions at scale.
Numbers matter. But numbers are not reality.
This seventh article in the Green Corruption series examines how carbon accounting, offsets, and neutrality claims can create the appearance of progress while allowing physical emissions and environmental damage to continue largely unchanged.
Carbon accounting is a method for estimating greenhouse gas emissions across activities, sectors, or entire economies. It is indispensable for understanding broad trends and for comparing scenarios.
But carbon accounting is:
model-based
assumption-dependent
sensitive to system boundaries
blind to many physical and ecological impacts
It simplifies reality in order to make it manageable. That simplification becomes a problem when the model is treated as the outcome itself.
Reducing a number on a balance sheet does not automatically reduce harm in the real world.
One of the most powerful — and least discussed — aspects of carbon accounting is boundary choice.
Accounting boundaries determine:
which emissions are counted
where they are counted
when they are counted
If emissions are shifted upstream or downstream, across borders or across decades, they may disappear from one ledger while remaining very real in the atmosphere.
This is not necessarily manipulation. It is how the system works. But it means that “reductions” often reflect reclassification, not physical change.
Carbon offsets are designed to compensate for emissions by funding reductions or sequestration elsewhere. In theory, one ton emitted here is canceled by one ton avoided or absorbed there.
In practice, offsets face persistent physical problems:
uncertainty about permanence
difficulty proving additionality
delayed or reversible sequestration
reliance on long-term assumptions
Planting trees today does not undo emissions released today. Preventing hypothetical future emissions does not remove existing ones.
Offsets often work best as accounting instruments — not as physical equivalents.
Many climate strategies depend on time-based promises:
neutrality by 2050
reductions “over the lifecycle”
compensation “in the long run”
Time matters physically. Emissions released now accumulate now. Climate systems respond to concentration, not intention.
By pushing accountability decades forward, present-day damage becomes easier to justify. The spreadsheet improves immediately; the atmosphere does not.
“Net zero” is often presented as a clear endpoint. In reality, it is a flexible accounting condition.
Net zero can be achieved by:
reducing emissions
offsetting emissions
redefining baselines
extending timelines
Two systems can both claim net zero while emitting vastly different amounts of greenhouse gases in the present.
The label conveys certainty. The underlying reality can vary dramatically.
When accounting becomes the primary measure of success, it shapes behavior.
Projects are optimized to:
perform well within accounting frameworks
qualify for credits or exemptions
meet formal targets with minimal disruption
Environmental damage that does not appear in carbon metrics becomes secondary. Local ecosystems, material intensity, land use, and chemical exposure fade into the background.
This is not fraud. It is misalignment — where what is measured replaces what matters.
Carbon accounting persists because it is:
scalable
legible to policymakers
compatible with existing economic systems
politically actionable
Physical reality is messy, slow, and resistant to simplification. Accounting offers clarity — even when that clarity is incomplete.
Once embedded in regulation and markets, the system reinforces itself. Success is defined by compliance with metrics, not by outcomes in the environment.
The themes explored earlier in this series rely on the same mechanism:
land destruction justified by future emissions savings
mining impacts dismissed as upstream necessities
toxic chemicals tolerated under transitional logic
Carbon accounting provides the common language that allows these trade-offs to proceed with moral confidence.
What cannot be counted easily is rarely prioritized.
An honest approach would recognize the limits of accounting:
emissions reductions should be physical and near-term
offsets should be treated as uncertain supplements, not equivalents
environmental impacts should be evaluated independently of carbon metrics
uncertainty should lead to caution, not permissiveness
Accounting should inform decisions — not replace reality.
Carbon accounting is a tool. It is not the climate, the atmosphere, or the biosphere.
When numbers are mistaken for outcomes, policies drift away from physical truth. Emissions continue, damage accumulates, and trust erodes — even as charts improve.
This article does not reject measurement. It rejects measurement as substitute.
This is the seventh article in the Green Corruption series. In the next installment, we will examine how public messaging and media narratives amplify these distortions — and why fear, simplification, and moral framing play such a powerful role.
