That year, South Pole was approaching a billion-dollar valuation, which would make it the world’s first “carbon unicorn.” As brands scrambled for inexpensive ways to reduce emissions, the market for offsets surged, quadrupling in 2021 alone. This perspective was enthusiastically received: Heuberger had regular speaking engagements at Davos and a spot in the World Economic Forum’s network of experts. “In fact, it’s the opposite”-drivers should enjoy their vehicles, knowing that “every ton of CO 2 they compensate for is backed by a verified emission reduction.” “It’s not true that to save the climate we will all need to go into perpetual lockdown or stop having fun,” he said, promoting Porsche’s offsetting program. But, as he built his company, he had developed a consumer-friendly brand of climate optimism. “We’re here to save the climate,” he told me.Īs a child, Heuberger spent his spare time gluing protest flyers to car windows, and he considered himself an activist. Heuberger, a kinetic, grandiloquent man, speaks expansively about his mission. South Pole thus pioneered a model of carbon offsetting that has been counted among our best hopes for staving off climate catastrophe: a mechanism that diverts funds from polluters in wealthy countries to protect crucial ecosystems in the Global South. Leading corporations, including Volkswagen, Gucci, Nestlé, Porsche, and Delta Air Lines, paid South Pole nearly a hundred million dollars for Kariba credits, allowing them to market goods or services as “carbon neutral.” The Kariba project, spanning an area ten times the size of New York City, was among the world’s first “avoided deforestation” programs by deterring local people from chopping down trees, it promised to prevent the release of tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gas. ![]() A decade earlier, South Pole had signed a deal to sell carbon offsets from an effort to protect a vast swath of forest on the banks of Lake Kariba, upriver from the camp.
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