A secondhand marketplace issues iffy carbon credits
A preloved garment’s footprint can be around 42% lower than a new one, which seems like a sweet deal for anyone hoping for fashion that’s gentler on the planet. But a new offering from Vestiaire, a luxury secondhand site based in Paris, could erase those gains for well-intentioned shoppers. Vestiaire recently announced that it will issue carbon credits for the CO2 its sales help avoid, and companies can buy them for $40 a pop as a means to zero out their own emissions. The platform says the funds will help sustain their business and overall goal of creating a more circular fashion system. Experts, however, aren’t convinced. “These credits don’t represent genuine emission reductions; they’re simply monetizing existing consumer behavior,” Benja Baecks of Carbon Market Watch told Trellis. “It sends the wrong signal by suggesting that buying more clothes, albeit used ones, is helping fight climate change.”
What you can do: Researchers are starting to see the overconsumptive habits of fast fashion pop up in secondhand circles, so be wary of any promises that might fuel an urge to buy. Sure, preloved will always be better than brand-new, but shopping your closet—and learning how to extend the life of what you already have—can’t be beat.
A trio of gut-shots
Brace yourselves: The reports are rolling in ahead of next month’s annual U.N. climate summit in Brazil, and the bad grades are piling up. Last Monday, a group of 160 scientists announced that the world is experiencing the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs, an event considered a climate tipping point—a moment at which a system suddenly, and often irrevocably, shifts. On Tuesday, a report called the Forest Declaration Assessment deemed the health of the world’s canopies “dismal,” noting that nations are tracking 63% behind their goal to zero out deforestation. And on Wednesday, the World Meteorological Association said that the concentration of planet-heating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record in 2024. We did warn you to brace yourselves…
What you can do: We know this is existential stuff—and it might leave you feeling a bit hopeless—but it’s important to remember that the world’s fate is not set in stone, And there is a glimmer of hope in last week’s barrage of bad news: Scientists at World Weather Attribution and the U.S.-based Climate Central crunched the numbers, and found that without the progress spurred by the Paris Agreement, the world would experience twice as many super-hot days by the end of the century.
This anti-climate catchphrase is no accident
The Trump administration’s continued efforts to discredit climate science might sound like a rash of flippant soundbytes, but they are deliberate. You need only look at the language it uses. Trump himself is fond of repeating “Green New Scam” as a play on “Green New Deal,” not only because it fits his penchant for namecalling, but also because, as Grist’s Kate Yoder reports, the phrase reframes real, meaningful climate policy as a kind of elaborate hoax. While it might be easy to roll your eyes at this and other juvenile messaging strategies, they’re part of a broader plan to replace facts with slogans. To push back, Yoder writes, climate advocates must go beyond facts and tell compelling stories that connect with people’s values—and their wallets—before it’s too late.
What you can do: Understand what good climate reporting looks like, continue to speak to individuals who might have differing views about the severity of climate change, and find ways to calmly speak up when misinformation drowns out the truth.
Fossil fuel companies pay renewable energy lip service
Ready for a shocker? Despite big, public promises to dial back their emissions, the world’s top 250 oil-and-gas companies are responsible for just 1.5% of all renewables, and alternative sources like geothermal and wind make up just 0.13% of all the energy they deliver. That’s according to a first-of-its-kind-analysis in the journal Nature Sustainability. “I think the article resolves the debate on whether the fossil fuel industry is honestly engaging with the climate crisis or not,” co-author Marcel Llavero-Pasquina told Anthropocene. Fossil-fuel companies’ decarbonization efforts tend to focus on carbon capture and storage technologies, which pull planet-warming gases from the air, usually near oil-and-gas extraction sites. While those efforts are part of most-every net-zero forecast going, analyses have shown that they’re no match for renewables.
What you can do: Stay vigilant. Don’t be swayed by the fossil-fuel industry’s media campaigns—which are pervasive enough to even trip up pros like Llavero-Pasquina: “I felt deceived,” he says. Even their tweets, one 2023 study found, are lessons in misdirection.