This is a joke, right?

@fasterandworse It does look a bit in poor taste. Their idea of "business as usual to save the world" is prone to scams and cover-ups. But at least they have a pretty clear reporting system that should make it easy for any investigative journalist to have come up with something if they're not honest:

https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/

Ecosia's financial reports

We love being transparent with you. That's why we publish monthly reports that show exactly how much money we made, and how we use it.

The Ecosia Blog

@benjaoming @fasterandworse aren't most of these companies that compensate carbon emissions scams anyway? Like, they do plant some trees but these are either not long term forest or the numbers of how much co2 a tree captures get massively inflated by doing some dodgy math

idk how you would check this tho

@kodymo @benjaoming @fasterandworse Yup, mostly scams. This episode of Last Week Tonight about carbon offsets is worth seeing https://youtu.be/6p8zAbFKpW0?si=8jpsMKmrIdGEoeXO
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@koolkat @benjaoming @fasterandworse yeah i was wondering if and how a layperson like me could vet whether or not a project is part of the 2% that actually compensate as much carbon as they claim

for now i'll just assume all of them are scams

@kodymo @koolkat @benjaoming @fasterandworse you can work with an org that plants locally where you (or someone you trust personally) can check. That's pretty much the only option I see. I do this with farmland that transforms into agroforestry. Certified via oncra.org... it's... work to say the least.