The climate change cult has produced a lot of misinformation, plenty of scare tactics, and years of pledges and policies by governments, none of which has done anything to impact the environment or the climate.

Add carbon credits to the list of “feel good” approaches that have largely turned out to be scams.

“The idea behind carbon offsets is that polluters can ‘offset’ the impact of their own carbon dioxide emissions by funding programs that reduce emissions elsewhere,” explains Seth Millstein at Sentient Science. “A simple example of this would be an oil company paying to have trees planted in the Amazon, as trees trap carbon from the atmosphere.” But even Millstein, a supporter of climate change initiatives, admits, “Despite their popularity, there’s a growing consensus among experts that carbon offsets, which are meant to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, are not an effective tool for fighting climate change, and in some cases may do more harm than good.”

This just in.

One popular way of helping the cause is forest preservation. It’s a great way for big polluters to justify their actions and keep the global warming fanatics from knocking on their doors. But these initiatives aren’t always what they seem. The Washington Post, for example, investigated one carbon credit scheme involving major companies and found that “more than half of all carbon credit forest preservation projects in the Brazilian Amazon overlapped with public territories.” In fact, “The businesses that purchased the carbon credits from the private land ventures to offset emissions included major international companies: Netflix, Air France, Delta Air Lines, Salesforce, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Airbnb, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Boston Consulting Group, Spotify, Boeing.”

The lack of accountability and traceability in these schemes explains their appeal to those seeking to exploit investors. “The Post’s investigation,” it says, “not only exposes failings in the global system for vetting such ventures but also calls into question the value of some projects in addressing global warming.” It adds, “Much of the Brazilian Amazon is safeguarded by a green shield of publicly protected lands: national forests, Indigenous territory, federal and state reserves. But when polluting companies buy credits generated by supposedly preserving land that was already protected, their money contributes next to nothing.”

Offsetting carbon comes in many different forms, and it’s not just companies but also individuals who want to appear to be doing something to save the Earth. Air travelers have the option to pay an extra fee when flying commercially in order to offset the carbon produced by the flight, but the small fee can’t possibly cover the carbon emissions of a typical flight. Passengers paying the fee might sleep a little better in the sky, but their efforts do nothing for the environment. Likewise, customers choosing to pay carbon offset fees when purchasing goods or having them shipped aren’t doing anything helpful other than making themselves feel good by thinking they’re saving the planet. In many cases, the fees are sent to organizations that ostensibly clean up the environment or plant trees.

Kit Dillon, examining carbon offsets for The New York Times, admits, “I spoke with carbon-offset experts, airline sustainability managers, nonprofit consulting groups, heads of aviation industry groups, and climate ethicists, and I sifted through years of evolving coverage and research. Not surprisingly, I didn’t discover any air-travel carbon offset programs that we could recommend. I say ‘not surprisingly’ because we encountered similar pitfalls when we investigated carbon offsets for laptops and so-called carbon neutral shipping.”

The carbon credit issue is difficult for most people to grasp. This leaves it wide open to abuse and fraud by those tapping into the fear and guilt experienced by many people over climate and environmental issues. A recent case serves as a window into the extent of the corruption.

“Joe Sanberg, a top California Democrat activist who decried the corruption of big Wall Street banks and started a company marketed as the ‘cleaner’ alternative, actually propped that company up through blatant fraud,” The Daily Wire reports. “Sanberg and other high-profile Democrats started the carbon-credit platform and online banking app Aspiration Partners Inc., promising to plant trees and not invest in polluting industries. Its motto was ‘clean rich is the new filthy rich.’ It was once a star of the ‘environmental, social, and governance (ESG)’ movement that blended corporate finance with leftist politics, and counted actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. as investors.”

Sanberg, a Gavin Newsom backer, is expected to plead guilty to defrauding investors out of $248 million, and former Aspiration board member Ibrahim AlHusseini has already pleaded guilty to wire fraud in connection with the operation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Sanberg and AlHusseini had no problems securing investments from companies eager to publicly support the climate change agenda and portray themselves as good stewards of the environment.

The Department of Justice exposed more of the Sanberg scam: “Court documents also state that Sanberg personally recruited companies and individuals to sign letters of intent with Aspiration in which they committed to pay tens of thousands of dollars per month for tree planting services. Sanberg used legal entities under his control to conceal that these payments came from Sanberg rather than from the customers. Sanberg instructed Aspiration employees not to contact the customers that he had recruited in order to conceal his scheme.”

There are many layers to the climate change cult, but they all point in the same direction. It’s all about power, control, and money.

Too many companies and individuals have been swindled by the carbon credit scam, but exposing climate charlatans for who they are might keep others from buying into the lies. Reducing pollution and preserving forests is a good thing, but these schemes do nothing for the environment or the climate that’s been changing since the beginning of time.