n4n0
Re point 1, I will just put Verra's response [1] to the articles you shared rather than die in a ditch of "public shitflinging". I suspect we won't find consensus between ourselves on the baselining issue here on the Alchemix forum. It's complex and I'd suggest there is perhaps no "right" answer to the debate (and it is not a challenge unique to the carbon markets! [2]).
In general, if one believes in the role of the carbon markets and that carbon credits can play in closing the emissions gap on our current trajectory of mid-century emissions and where we need to be to avert the worst impacts of global warming, then using Verra, or other ICROA-endorsed [3] carbon credits is typically considered best practice. This is the industry standard, and although there are alternative standards and approaches popping up, few (if any) have justified themselves yet over the med-term. We are watching keenly at KlimaDAO as new approaches emerge, and figuring it how and when to integrate them into our system.
I am not sure what 'phantom' credits mean, and need more from you to understand how to best answer that. I'll take an initial stab nevertheless. If you mean 'Zombie Credits', per Carbon Plan's inordinate article, I suggest checking out our deep dive into the BCT pool [4] for a measured counter perspective. If you are specifically referring to HFC-23 credits then check out our recent Press Release on the 'pool clean-up' operation [5] and I am sure you will be satisfied! If you are in general questioning the 'bridging' process and speaking to the risk of double counting, then I recommend checking out the Docs from Toucan [6], C3 [7], or Moss [8]; these are the organizations responsible for the bridging process and mitigating the double-counting risk (of which we are 100% confident they do so).
At a high-level, one of the reasons we want to bring this system to a public blockchain, is because the transparency that it brings is basically unrivalled. We created our carbon dashboard [9], so that there is no doubt for users of our ecosystem around the type of credits available, whether there is any risk of double counting, and what the fair & unobscured market price is. By including links to the Registry and the project documents on the Dashboard, users of KlimaDAO can go very deep indeed, and receive the assurances they require before participating in the carbon market; this is rarely possible in the "off-chain" market. We think this is a significant and exciting step forward for all involved in the carbon markets.
Re Bloomberg, in the interest of balance, again I'll just share our response to Akshat Rathi & Natasha White rather than rehashing old arguments [10]. Think the above commentary covers off the Time article; my general perspective on this type of commentary has been shared on Twitter [11], but TLDR is that the positive and negative press is roughly delineated by those who could be bothered to have a conversation with us prior to publishing their hot take, and those who couldn't.
Regarding your challenges around the integrity and transparency of KlimaDAO. First, I would ask if you listened to the Community Call? We covered a lot of this conversation during that session. The recording may help you understand where we're coming from here. We create Liquidity Pools for tokenized carbon credits, because we feel LPs are a better infrastructure for facilitating the VCM rather than the closed OTC market that is currently how units are transacted off-chain. We are not resellers or "cash[ing] in" on a "dank market". For transparency there is a 1% fee if you use our Retirement Aggregator to retire carbon credits direct from our LPs; this fee could be somewhere between 50% and 200% cheaper than in the off-chain world [12]. We think it is fair and modest fee. As discussed in the Community Call, we want to help projects who are interested in learning more about, and taking action/a leadership role in compensating for their emissions. In return, we hope to increase awareness and our adoption of our Web3-enabled ecosystem, as we do genuinely think it is superior to the obfuscated off-chain market.
If you don't think that there is any need to compensate for historical emissions, and/or you don't think there is a role for the carbon markets in enabling compensation, then fair enough. We're here to provide support and collab where it is wanted, but not force things on people who aren't bought into this sort of action.
And then finally, during the Community Call I volunteered to provide support to help select specific projects that may suit Alchemix's preferences (and quality requirements, e.g. around your baselining concern) using our carbon dashboard to give assurances around what would be used for the historical offset. I also said I'd be happy to jump on another Community Call to go into this more, so if you'd like to go deeper on any/all of these issues then let's do it! I think it may be quicker/more productive/more interesting than slinging the same old articles at one another!
P.S. I think you forgot one of your sources [13]
[1] https://verra.org/verra-response-to-guardian-article-on-carbon-offsets-used-by-major-airlines/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_market
[3] https://www.icroa.org/code
[4] https://www.klimadao.finance/blog/klimadao-analysis-of-the-base-carbon-tonne
[5] https://www.klimadao.finance/blog/bct-hfc23-cleanup
[6] https://docs.toucan.earth/toucan/bridge/carbon-bridge
[7] https://docs.c3.app/the-basics/carbon-bridge
[8] https://real-time-attest.trustexplorer.io/moss
[9] https://carbon.klimadao.finance/
[10] https://www.bloomberg.com/letters/2022-04-12/klimadao-responds-to-bloomberg-story-on-carbon-offsets
[11] https://twitter.com/0xy_moron/status/1563434502999142400
[12] https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2022/05/02/carbon-offsetting-market-climate/
[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0