Investments in “carbon offsets” by Delta Air Lines and other corporations aim to present more environmentally friendly images, but they now face strong headwinds, both in the courtroom and in independent reports.
In the Central District of California, a potential class-action lawsuit filed last year challenges Delta’s claim of being “the world’s first carbon-neutral airline” as false. In addition, the carbon-neutral description deceives consumers who thought they were flying on an airline that had reduced its carbon footprint to zero, the lawsuit states.
Earlier this month, the nonprofit group Corporate Accountability highlighted new studies that indicate questionable science and assumptions underlie what’s called the voluntary carbon-offset market – which consists of a grouping of companies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that directs corporate funding toward environmental projects, including forest protection and renewable technology.
Due to concerns about the actual benefits of carbon offsets, the Science Based Targets (SBT) initiative recently released new research explaining its decision not to endorse corporations’ investments in the carbon-offset market worldwide. Such investments are a distraction from effective efforts against climate change, according to Corporate Accountability.
Jonathan Haderlein, one of the attorneys representing Glendale resident Mayanna Berrin in the California class action, said not every carbon-offset investment is fraudulent, but corporations must be honest about the impact of those investments.
“Even if we assume that all the projects are being taken in good faith, there are still a lot of scientific and methodological issues that underlie the validity and reliability of the claims … coming out of the carbon market,” Haderlein told the Southern California Record.
“Additionality” is the most important concept in the discussion of carbon offsets, he said.
“Additionality is the requirement that credited emissions reductions were genuinely present in a manner that would not have occurred otherwise,” Haderlein said, “as in whether the project in question would in fact reduce more carbon than if it had not been funded. That's the core question.”
Corporations may say that they invested in ways that prevented deforestation, but sometimes they invest in lands that already have development protections and would be saved regardless of the corporate investments, he said. In other instances, investments in forest set-asides may ultimately be in vain due to natural disasters such as fires, according to Haderlein.
Companies may also try to take credit for investments in green technologies that are already achieving success due to government subsidies or market forces, he said.
Delta did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit against Delta alleges that the corporation’s claims of being carbon-neutral are “manifestly and provably false” due to inaccurate accounting, speculative emissions impacts that span decades and projects that may be compromised by disease and human intervention.
The proposed class would consist of California or U.S. residents who were misled into buying airline tickets on the belief that the airline was offsetting pollution from its operations worldwide, according to the complaint.
“Reasonable consumers reviewing these (Delta carbon-offset) representations would believe that when taking account of all of (the) defendant’s carbon emissions and related green investments, defendant has not been responsible for releasing any net additional carbon into the atmosphere since March 2020,” the lawsuit states.
The plaintiff purchased travel services from Delta based on misleading pronouncements about ecologically conscious air travel, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiff is seeking an injunction to stop Delta from engaging in practices criticized in the complaint as well as a class certification and compensatory damages.