On behalf of Ireland, I'd like to thank John and everyone who donates for saving our whales and dolphins, we were unsure if they'd have enough trees to live in throughout the winter.

"that violently British man did a pretty good job of explaining the concept" can also sum up his whole show

As an ecologist, well done John for explaining that it is very hard to achieve zero emissions. Also it matters whether the trees planted belong to that area are exotic or native. That pine tree in africa was a weird decision,pines are NOT found in africa.Planting exotic trees which invade native trees will only damage the land. Offsets are just a short cut, the solution should start with phasing out fossil fuels!

I remember learning about how at one point the catholic church sold vouchers for prayers to people, so that they could effectively "pay away" their sins and guilt to get into heaven. The simlilarities to our modern carbon offsets is eerily similar, imo.

Ahhh, time for another day of my daily dose of existential crisis in comedy format

Seeing John Oliver quoting research done by Wendover Productions is amazing. This what new media landscape has become and it’s sweet.

The extent these big corporations go through just to not do anything is insane. We are all doomed.

That unfaithful wife bit was golden. That burn was beyond what was needed to start a fire

One of the main issues with "net zero" or "offsets" is the fact that it often completely disregards the time factor. You can cut don a tree and burn it within a few hours, but having that same tree grow back to it's former size (and thus Carbon content) can take decades or even centuries. That fact is usually not prominently displayed in those net zero calculations...for obvious reasons...

Carbon offsets feel like a very "pay your way into heaven" approach to solving climate change

Finally, Wendover Productions is in Last Week Tonight. Awesome

I'm so glad he did an episode on this! He is absolutely hitting the nail on the head! Another thing to note is the obvious fact that trees take time to grow!!!! Many species of trees aren't fully grown after a decade!! And in the early stages, they require maintenance!!! And planting baby forests will OBVIOUSLY not immediately sequester the same amount of carbon as a forest full of mature trees!!!!! time to face up - YES you actually need to STOP polluting!!!!

So glad to see Wendover Productions get a shout out in this episode. Wendover did such a great job breaking down how the scams operate and why they're doing so much more harm than good.

Good to see John using Wendover Productions as an example to explain offsets. Wendover Productions's carbon offsets video was a great one.

I wasn’t expecting Wendover Productions in a John Oliver segment but I’m absolutely here for it!

Nice job Sam!!

Offsets are basically paying a protection fee to a mobster saying "that's a nice forest you got there, would be a real shame if something were to happen to it"

This honestly sounds like companies are holding the earth itself hostage. “Send me money, or I will cut down these trees, and keep sending me money or I will be cutting down forests”

By god this segment is good. So well written. So impactful. Congrats to the whole writing staff.

I am so glad Oliver touched on the fact that a lot of the 'offsets' that are being purchased are done so on the backs of landowners in developing countries. It's another financial shell game for companies to keep doing what they would have been doing anyway and get a marketing boost out of it. The only way to curb emissions is to stop emitting, period.

Fascinating claim by Kitkat considering that Nestle admitted to Congress that they know slavery is part of their supply chain and it would be too difficult and expensive to assure that their chocolate is fairtrade.

- Guys, we're going to kill ourselves through pollution. - You're right, how can we make money from all this tho?

"This beak opens for sad news and porridge and I'm all out of porridge" doubles as sad news

Proud to say I am officially carbon neutral thanks to Oliver Offsets!

Nice to see the use of Wendover in this. He did a great video about the Carbon Offsets scam

Thanks, John Oliver, for entertaining and informing us at the same time! Keep up the great work! You truly deserve every Emmy that you have won and will win!

Much Love to John Oliver and his team. This show is one of the many reasons Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has won the Emmy Award for best show since 2015. We need more John Oliver's! And much love to John Stewart for your gift of whit and talent in having John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper as part of your team....a breath of fresh air...

Taking on corporations is why I love LWT so much. Many shows are afraid of calling them out, fearing losing sponsors (ie. money), but John Oliver just goes straight for the their throats in his truth telling.

Any time John says "practically anyone can set up...." I know he knows because they DID it.

This really is a continuous problem of magic thinking. We want solutions that makes us feel like we're doing the right thing, but also requires zero effort or sacrifice.

One of the best things about John's work is he and his staff actually DO the things that prove the BS is really BS. Gotta love that.

I love how giant corporations have convinced us that we are the problem with emissions...and not...you know..the giant corporations.

As a Ugandan, I think the effects of offset solutions being sent to the third world and developing countries are felt firsthand by the very occupants of that country, which actually emit negligible amounts of carbon dioxide. They face the wrath of governments trying to implement a project that solves nothing without knowing that the source of funding comes from the industrialized world. The Swedish company will abandon the project, but the local Ugandans will not get their land back.

Carbon offsetting is the serial killer equivalent of being paid not to kill a victim you'd not planned on killing in the first place

John Oliver is absolutely fantastic and this show is a beam of light in a world that gets darker every day.. thank you

"An Atlas Of Human Suffering." Goddamn, that's dystopian _as fuck._ What a time to be alive.

Here in Spain, I recently found out that there is a foreign company dedicated to sell carbon offsets by planting trees. It turns out, most of the trees where dead due to drought also a large part burned on recent fires but because they planted the trees they still get paid as if the trees where alive and absorbing CO2

"When you buy an offset, so you can pollute more, and that offset is bullshit, you're now actively making things worse" - I'm frightened by the fact, that this is so very true, and that big companies spend lots of money - with good intentions - on making things worse...

I love John and his team. Their research is excellent and arguments are insanely strong. Can't watch too many in a row or I get depressed, but love them anyway. Humans are the absolute worst.

Congratulations to Wendover Productions! Their video on carbon offsets is really well done!

Hank: “What the heck is a carbon offset?” Dale: “It’s like a ‘get out of jail free’ card for people concerned about the environment but not concerned enough to do anything.”

Honestly, this whole offsetting system always sounded even worse to me if the customer got to pay for it. Oh yeah? You ALLOW ME to pay so YOU can handle YOUR waste? Great. Thanks a lot. Next time I am eating out, I am gonna ask the restaurant if they want me to pay them 2€, so I get to take one bag full of their trash with me.

John is an international treasure for the like he shines on these things. If modern civilisation ever had a Tombstone, it would read, here lies, people who could, but who didn’t”

When John Oliver said... "When I said practically anyone can set up a carbon offset company, you all knew where this was going".... Yes... Yes we did. 😏🏆

*Editing this entire thing because after some fact checking, it turns out that corporations *don't* get to use your donated money (directly or from round ups at the register) as a write off on their taxes. It's nice to know that there's actually some regulation in place for this. Instead, I'd caution you to look very closely at the charities the companies are giving the money to. There are a lot of charities out there who have become extremely predatory and harm those they claim to help.

John Oliver always sounds a little relieved when his jokes hit

As a simple woman from Sub Saharan Africa... Deepest of the appreciations for your lessons... 1) offset does not limit the carbon emission as it is supposed to be! 2) offset is a genuine mechanism used to "capture people moneys but not the carbon" 3) offsetting is a way to crooked people in developing countries to use and abuse people in developed countries and at the same token to pocket the moneys and continue to enrich those who pollute the most! 4) Offset approach would never work as it is a strait way to capture funding that should indeed go to development projets in poor countries that would effectively capture carbone... and do real goods... for example to enrich the soil biomass and improve agriculture - healthy food productions 5) As long as the UN and rich countries and emotional people in those industrialized country failed to request on who receive the money and how it benefits people and the people - it is just a crooked mechanism that enrich the rich polluer

Wendover Productions and Last Week Tonight having a cross over is EVERYTHING and I am here for it.

"What it is, what it does, and why it may actually be making things worse." I've never heard the weekly format of this show summarized so succinctly.

This was an extremely needed video, thank you!

That offset your pig bit was wretched and I laughed SO hard.

What I always found interesting was none of them ever strove to be carbon negative…

saying that "not chopping down a tree" offsets carbon emissions is like saying "not burning down your house" is investment in real estate

Nghe xong bài này cái thấy tâm trạng buồn và nặng nề kinh khủng. Nhưng lại cứ phải replay hoài cả ngày😍

Straight out of university (back in 2012), I worked with some "alternative" investment companies that sold carbon credits. Safe to say that they weren't worth the paper they were written on. A potentially good idea that was completely ruined by greed

S/O to wendover productions for getting featured and legitimizing their research and presentation process!

I'm *thrilled* that you took the time to frame this. Trained as a geologist and climatologist, I thought the general public knew that this, like "oil spill clean up", was pure performance art. I was genuinely shocked to learn that the public wasn't in on this theatre, and many believe that these measures are actually effective. Everyone in the industry knows that businesses, government, and media goes through the motions that something significant has been done, and they all go on as usual.

Simply brilliant. As always.

Thanks John this is very insightful🧿

Love that Wendover Productions is getting some big time recognition. They produce excellent content on that channel.

I was hanging out with my pet rabbit when I decided to watch this on my phone. The moment John started talking, my rabbit hopped over and started watching the video intently. I’m not sure whether it was the subject content or hearing John Oliver’s voice but she was completely engrossed in it for the entire 23 minutes. So John, you clearly have a new fan. She will be tuning in with me every Sunday from now on.

Another thing I did not know about making the world worse and there's no hope and nothing I can do about it. Thanks, John.

Thank you for this! 💚

I love how quickly companies went to passing along the cost of these offsets on to their customers. It's like "we didn't want to do this but yo u do so here you pay for it"

They'll just raise prices and make you pay for the "carbon offsets", then the executives will increase their salaries, bonuses, and benefits. Those executives will then just buy more houses, planes, and increase their individual carbon outputs by the equivalent of millions of people each.

The green power house as mentioned in the "Need to Grow" documentary is the best solution I've seen. A closed loop generator that sequesters carbon, grows algae & herbs, and creates biochar.

Am about to cite this video as a reputable source for my paper on climate change, and the ineffectiveness of carbon offsets.

Carbon Offsets are a very capitalistic solution to the problem. It's a way to "fix" the issue without actually addressing the cause by throwing money at it. Companies still make record profits, still pollute just as much, can say they are "carbon neutral", and get a tax write-off for the expense. Carbon Offets makes them money. That's the only reason they're doing it.

In short: don’t be surprised when the technique designed by companies to avoid responsibility doesn’t account for the issue at all

This issue is like eating 2 big macs w a side of large fries and having a diet coke as your drink

Thanks John

Love how Kitkat, rather than stopping with the child labor for their cacao, is spending on offsetting. I mean, in theory a good thing to do, but it's a very odd priority and presumably a cheaper way to positive press than stopping exploiting children.

So if you want your mind really blown: Finite Carbon, one of the companies running this type of program was bought out by British Petroleum. The same BP that brought you the Gulf oil spill. NCX was a small forestry operation before Microsoft, JPMorgan, and venture capital got involved. These companies are mostly owned or operated for the benefit of big business or venture capitalists. Their goal is not to offset carbon emissions, it’s to monetize a “feeling” of doing something good for the environment rather than actually doing anything…

There was a bit of controversy in my home town in rural New Zealand American companies bought farm land to plant red wood trees for carbon credits the problem was that the farm land is in a large flood prone valley so when they get harvested the debris is likely to cause significant damage to the towns in that valley

OMG! John's Shrek impersonation had me laughing out loud.

I work at a company doing carbon stocktaking and, yes, offsetting. If you or your company seeks to offset emissions, first of all, consult a European company, because the standards are much stricter. Trees are always a shaky investment, but if you insist on trees, see that you get a project with a replanting guarantee. That way, if the forest fires inevitably get to your 7 acre woods, the same amount will need to be planted again. Never use temporary credits. If you're looking for efficiency, ie cheap credits, consider heating- or cooking projects in developing nations. And please, big companies, stop ruining it for everybody.

Saw the title of this and, immediately, thought, "I'm going to see some Wendover content I already watched." Glad they added to the comedy. John Oliver is a funny guy.

Last Week Tonight, your reporting was magnificent. Thank you for putting effort into investigating and sharing your findings. Outstanding!!

I am learning so much.

9:50 OUR BOY WENDOVER

"Pollution, coupled with Human Greed and Stupidity, are the biggest threats to humanity." -Stephen Hawking

Awesome video, thank you.

Oh my god you guys did amazing with this episode.

9:33 Shoutout to Wendover Productions. Well deserved feature of a very good channel!

Glad John Oliver is increasing consumer awareness about green washing, companies are doing all kinds of things to avoid fundamentally changing their businesses. As consumers we need to hold them accountable and push for more. We want radical change, no fossil fuel, no 1-time plastic, accurate tracking of ethical supply chains, reusing 100% of trash, etc.

The offset your pig joke got me, man.. The Dutch accident is hilarious!

Excellent!!

The audience overlap between Sam/Wendover and John Oliver is huge. John's trying to harness this is awesome 😎

Asking consumers to pitch in $2 to offset their carbon footprint absolutely reeks of the 2000s recycling campaigns which saddled the everyman with the burden of saving the environment - 'it's your fault for using too much electricity, not recycling as much' etc, meanwhile major corporations had absolutely massive footprints and couldn't be bothered to budge and inch. They're shifting the responsibility onto us again and we're somehow falling for it again.

Offsets are like urinating into our water supply while adding some water too.

Wendover made it to the Oliver's show. Well, that was a surprise to say the least!!!!

Regarding the shovel made out of a KitKat not being sustainable: the crunchy insides of a KitKat bar are other pulverized KitKat bars that were broken or misshapen during production. KitKats eat themselves. That's already minimal waste and a commitment to sustainability.

"Not cutting down trees shouldn't be hard" My town: Excuse us while we cut down acres of forest for no reason at all, and do absolutely nothing with the newly cleared land. Also, no trespassing.

Catching up on John Oliver and at the KitKat ad I honestly went to skip ad.. sigh. Ok. Back to the watching 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

those set designers deserve an award the tree scenery made for that skit was so gorgeous and a lot for a minute long joke

The focus on companies should always had been that they have to minimize their own carbon emissions instead of giving an escape by having them say "well we are producing more trees over there that dont account much for what we do, and will take years to grow into something that properly does its job, while every single day we still emit the same carbon and do nothing about it". What's going to be the escape once we run out of space for these offset projects?, because as always actually fixing the damn problem will always be the last priority.

I wish he had talked about how a lot of tree planting initiatives aren't done with proper biodiversity conservation objectives in mind, which can lead to monocultures or invasive species that harm ecosystems, and other issues. Also, when these trees are planted, there are usually no management measures for who looks after those trees, and a lot of those trees can just end up dying anyway. Even if it's done right, ***tree planting cannot replace older forests***; older forests have SIGNIFICANTLY more value for carbon storage due to their complex structures and large trees-the potential to mitigate carbon emissions increases by at least 600% by preserving intact forests and avoiding associated forest degradation practices. So it's *MUCH* more valuable to preserve forests than to plant new trees. It's not a one-for-one trade because it would take at least a hundred years for new forests to develop properly, and we don't have that kind of time to wait. I work in this field so it's something I hope more people can understand! I suggest anyone who is interested in this topic to check out these open-access scientific papers on it: Maxwell, S. L., Evans, T., Watson, J. E. M., Morel, A., Grantham, H., Duncan, A., … Malhi, Y. (2019). Degradation and forgone removals increase the carbon impact of intact forest loss by 626%. Science Advances, 5(10), eaax2546. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax2546 www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.aax2546 Di Sacco, A., Hardwick, K. A., Blakesley, D., Brancalion, P. H. S., Breman, E., Cecilio Rebola, L., … Antonelli, A. (2021). Ten golden rules for reforestation to optimize carbon sequestration, biodiversity recovery and livelihood benefits. Global Change Biology, 27(7), 1328-1348. doi: 10.1111/gcb.15498 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.15498

It's not just planting new trees, it's leaving old growth alone going forward. Contrary to popular belief, old trees are actually the healthiest trees and are pretty necessary.

Wendover production is in the big leagues! Never thought I’d see a major/main stream media use his vids

I live in a rural area with many "dirt poor" land owners. All of our timberland is basically clear cut at this point. It is in the Southeast so the land should be completely forested, but you can drive for miles through the country side and see nothing be waste and devastation from clearcutting. If these offsets could prevent such a catastrophe they could be able to do good, but again, there is little incentive in a capitalist system to do good for good's sake. The bottom line is profits, and the rest is controlling the narrative. I don't believe capitalism is a solution and I know capitalism is why all the land is being clearcut and corrupted with pollution.