Plant-for-the-Planet is famous for its wunderkind Felix Finkbeiner. But Felix's father Frithjof is busy clearing forest to build a gated community on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Based on a Zeit article by @herrfischer.bsky.social and Hannah Knuth. reddmonitor.substack.com/p/plant-for-...
Plant-for-the-Planet promises reforestation. Meanwhile Frithjof Finkbeiner is clearing forest for luxury housing
And trying to sell an “extremely lucrative” beach villa to Plant-for-the-Planet Mexico.
reddmonitor.substack.com
![Consumers in the developed world are to be offered a radical method of offsetting their carbon emissions in an ambitious attempt to tackle climate change - by paying for contraception measures in poorer countries to curb the rapidly growing global population.
The scheme - set up by an organisation backed by Sir David Attenborough, the former diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell and green figureheads such as Jonathon Porritt and James Lovelock - argues that family planning is the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic global warming.
Optimum Population Trust (Opt) stresses that birth control will be provided only to those who have no access to it, and only unwanted births would be avoided. Opt estimates that 80 million pregnancies each year are unwanted.
The cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the trust claims that family planning is the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions. Every £4 spent on contraception, it says, saves one tonne of CO2 being added to global warming, but a similar reduction in emissions would require an £8 investment in tree planting, £15 in wind power, £31 in solar energy and £56 in hybrid vehicle technology.
Calculations based on the trust's figures show the 10 tonnes emitted by a return flight from London to Sydney would be offset by enabling the avoidance of one unwanted birth in a country such as Kenya. Such action not only cuts emissions but reduces the number of people who will fall victim to climate change, it says.
"The scheme, called PopOffsets, understands the connection [between population increase and climate change]," says the trust director Roger Martin. "It offers a practical and sensible response. For the first time ever individuals, companies and organisations will have the opportunity to offset their carbon voluntarily by supporting projects to provide family planning services where there is currently unmet demand."
In papers released with the launch of the offset scheme, the trust claims that reducing CO …](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:66lbtw2porscqpmair6mir37/bafkreiewj7xpp4hbff4nwd5b4e2456zijxvszye6jjnqjb7wullbydgpta)
