Thanks for this Chris. I don’t see how anyone can write a book in three days unless they just plugged their info into an LLM and had it churn out the content. With so much of that happening now (I can’t tell you how many ‘editing’ jobs there are in Upwork paying people to ‘humanise’ AI written manuscripts - I won’t do it because it’s so boring), it’s driving expectations around writing down and down. Thanks for a well written article!
Thanks for this! I did wonder how much Connolly used AI to produce this book. It's very repetitive in places. It's also quite short. While it's almost 300 pages long, there's a lot of white space and quite a few photographs.
That's actually scary. I watched Connolly's Ted talk presentation posted under comments and thought she has good things to offer, especially the part with community impacts and unequal benefit sharing. But now it seems like that's nothing more than glorifying her business under the same logic of profiting from the climate crisis. AI and block chains for offset integrity? Come on...
Chris, thanks for reading the book. I’ll respond to what you’re actually arguing.
You get stuck on fossil fuels, and that’s where the review goes sideways. You’re reading this on your phone or your computer, both made largely from petroleum based plastics and components. The same is true for data centers, satellites, cables, batteries, shipping, and modern infrastructure. Fossil fuels are not disappearing anytime soon. Energy transitions take decades, not headlines.
Carbon credits aren’t going away either. The EU supports them. The UN funds and promotes them. They’re embedded in policy, compliance systems, and international frameworks. Acting like they’ll simply disappear is naïve. Since they exist and will continue to exist, integrity matters.
The book never argues that fossil fuels or carbon markets should magically vanish. That idea is a strawman. The argument is straightforward. Markets that exist alongside fossil fuels need transparency, accountability, and real benefits for the communities involved. Too often, they don’t. That failure is what the book calls out.
On technology, you argue that AI, data, and standards have limits and costs. Of course they do. Everything does. The current lack of measurement, verification, and traceability has far bigger costs. Over crediting, double counting, weak governance, and communities being cut out of value flows are happening right now. Technology isn’t a magic fix. It’s basic infrastructure.
You cite research suggesting offsets may be fundamentally broken. That work isn’t ignored. Declaring a market “unfixable” while it continues to operate at scale doesn’t protect anyone. It leaves the same players in control with no pressure to improve. If the market exists, oversight matters.
You’re right that Kariba is one of the strongest parts of the book. It’s there because it’s real. Expanding it into a single exhaustive case study wasn’t the point. The point was the pattern. Kariba isn’t an outlier. It’s representative.
Concerns about conflicts of interest in African carbon initiatives don’t weaken the argument. They reinforce it. Power concentration, opaque governance, and misaligned incentives are exactly why transparency and traceability are needed.
There’s also a lot of focus on how quickly the book was written. Writing was fast because the experience wasn’t. Years of field work, contracts, audits, concessions, and broken promises were already lived. Familiarity shortens the writing process. It doesn’t reduce rigor.
The book was never meant to be a philosophical essay on capitalism or colonialism. It’s a market mechanics critique. Expecting one book to cover every structural issue isn’t realistic.
The critique also doesn’t stop there. That’s why we wrote a follow up book, Standardising Carbon Markets: Improving Transparency and Traceability with AI, DLT and IoT, published by Apress. That book focuses on how to fix what’s broken using standards, governance, and real tools, not slogans.
Read the first book to understand the problem. Read the second if you want to argue solutions.
Happy to debate facts, evidence, and market design. One line dismissals don’t move anything forward.
Thanks for this Jaye. I'll take your comments in turn.
Fossil fuels: Your argument about fossil fuels is taken from the Climate Denier's Playbook. It's literally chapter 1 of the Playbook. "How dare you criticize fossil fuels! Don’t you know you live in a society that has become utterly dependent on them?!?" (https://www.climatetownproductions.com/podcast/youoweyourlife) As I point out it my review "the book has nothing to say about the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground". That's a major omission.
"Carbon credits aren't going away": The point is that carbon credits are a disaster for the climate precisely because they help rich countries to avoid addressing the major cause of the climate crisis. Which is burning fossil fuels.
Your strawman argument makes no sense. What's wrong with your book is that it has nothing to say about leaving fossil fuels in the ground. On the contrary, it allows the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual by buying carbon credits.
Offsets are not "fixable", as Romm et al. and a long list of other peer reviewed research clearly demonstrates.
Kariba: I wasn't suggesting that the entire book should be about Kariba. I agree that Kariba is not an outlier. It's the best part of the book, but in my opinion, what you write about Kariba is not as strong as it could have been.
As I point out in the review there's a lot missing from your discussion in your book of the Africa Voluntary Carbon Market Forum.
I do not put "a lot of focus on how quickly the book was written". Here's everything that I wrote about how quickly the book was written: "In a podcast with the publishers of the book (LID Publishing) Connolly says she wrote the book in three days. I believe her. It reads exactly like a book that was written in three days."
You say that your book is a "market mechanics critique". My point is that writing a "market mechanics critique" without mentioning capitalism or colonialism, is a massive, serious omission. Especially when the market you're writing about is itself a form of colonialism (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/t/colonialism).
The book "Standardising Carbon Markets: Improving Transparency and Traceability with AI, DLT and IoT" is edited by Kalyani Inampudi and Jonathan Rackoff. You wrote a chapter in the book titled, "Controversy to Credibility: Reforming Carbon Markets with Technology". (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/979-8-8688-2037-3_3)
All the technology in the world will not reform carbon markets. Even if it could, carbon markets do not address the climate crisis. They are a dangerous distraction from the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Carbon markets have made the climate crisis worse.
Thanks for this Chris. I don’t see how anyone can write a book in three days unless they just plugged their info into an LLM and had it churn out the content. With so much of that happening now (I can’t tell you how many ‘editing’ jobs there are in Upwork paying people to ‘humanise’ AI written manuscripts - I won’t do it because it’s so boring), it’s driving expectations around writing down and down. Thanks for a well written article!
Thanks for this! I did wonder how much Connolly used AI to produce this book. It's very repetitive in places. It's also quite short. While it's almost 300 pages long, there's a lot of white space and quite a few photographs.
That's actually scary. I watched Connolly's Ted talk presentation posted under comments and thought she has good things to offer, especially the part with community impacts and unequal benefit sharing. But now it seems like that's nothing more than glorifying her business under the same logic of profiting from the climate crisis. AI and block chains for offset integrity? Come on...
Chris, thanks for reading the book. I’ll respond to what you’re actually arguing.
You get stuck on fossil fuels, and that’s where the review goes sideways. You’re reading this on your phone or your computer, both made largely from petroleum based plastics and components. The same is true for data centers, satellites, cables, batteries, shipping, and modern infrastructure. Fossil fuels are not disappearing anytime soon. Energy transitions take decades, not headlines.
Carbon credits aren’t going away either. The EU supports them. The UN funds and promotes them. They’re embedded in policy, compliance systems, and international frameworks. Acting like they’ll simply disappear is naïve. Since they exist and will continue to exist, integrity matters.
The book never argues that fossil fuels or carbon markets should magically vanish. That idea is a strawman. The argument is straightforward. Markets that exist alongside fossil fuels need transparency, accountability, and real benefits for the communities involved. Too often, they don’t. That failure is what the book calls out.
On technology, you argue that AI, data, and standards have limits and costs. Of course they do. Everything does. The current lack of measurement, verification, and traceability has far bigger costs. Over crediting, double counting, weak governance, and communities being cut out of value flows are happening right now. Technology isn’t a magic fix. It’s basic infrastructure.
You cite research suggesting offsets may be fundamentally broken. That work isn’t ignored. Declaring a market “unfixable” while it continues to operate at scale doesn’t protect anyone. It leaves the same players in control with no pressure to improve. If the market exists, oversight matters.
You’re right that Kariba is one of the strongest parts of the book. It’s there because it’s real. Expanding it into a single exhaustive case study wasn’t the point. The point was the pattern. Kariba isn’t an outlier. It’s representative.
Concerns about conflicts of interest in African carbon initiatives don’t weaken the argument. They reinforce it. Power concentration, opaque governance, and misaligned incentives are exactly why transparency and traceability are needed.
There’s also a lot of focus on how quickly the book was written. Writing was fast because the experience wasn’t. Years of field work, contracts, audits, concessions, and broken promises were already lived. Familiarity shortens the writing process. It doesn’t reduce rigor.
The book was never meant to be a philosophical essay on capitalism or colonialism. It’s a market mechanics critique. Expecting one book to cover every structural issue isn’t realistic.
The critique also doesn’t stop there. That’s why we wrote a follow up book, Standardising Carbon Markets: Improving Transparency and Traceability with AI, DLT and IoT, published by Apress. That book focuses on how to fix what’s broken using standards, governance, and real tools, not slogans.
Read the first book to understand the problem. Read the second if you want to argue solutions.
Happy to debate facts, evidence, and market design. One line dismissals don’t move anything forward.
Thanks for this Jaye. I'll take your comments in turn.
Fossil fuels: Your argument about fossil fuels is taken from the Climate Denier's Playbook. It's literally chapter 1 of the Playbook. "How dare you criticize fossil fuels! Don’t you know you live in a society that has become utterly dependent on them?!?" (https://www.climatetownproductions.com/podcast/youoweyourlife) As I point out it my review "the book has nothing to say about the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground". That's a major omission.
"Carbon credits aren't going away": The point is that carbon credits are a disaster for the climate precisely because they help rich countries to avoid addressing the major cause of the climate crisis. Which is burning fossil fuels.
Your strawman argument makes no sense. What's wrong with your book is that it has nothing to say about leaving fossil fuels in the ground. On the contrary, it allows the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual by buying carbon credits.
Offsets are not "fixable", as Romm et al. and a long list of other peer reviewed research clearly demonstrates.
Kariba: I wasn't suggesting that the entire book should be about Kariba. I agree that Kariba is not an outlier. It's the best part of the book, but in my opinion, what you write about Kariba is not as strong as it could have been.
As I point out in the review there's a lot missing from your discussion in your book of the Africa Voluntary Carbon Market Forum.
I do not put "a lot of focus on how quickly the book was written". Here's everything that I wrote about how quickly the book was written: "In a podcast with the publishers of the book (LID Publishing) Connolly says she wrote the book in three days. I believe her. It reads exactly like a book that was written in three days."
You say that your book is a "market mechanics critique". My point is that writing a "market mechanics critique" without mentioning capitalism or colonialism, is a massive, serious omission. Especially when the market you're writing about is itself a form of colonialism (https://reddmonitor.substack.com/t/colonialism).
The book "Standardising Carbon Markets: Improving Transparency and Traceability with AI, DLT and IoT" is edited by Kalyani Inampudi and Jonathan Rackoff. You wrote a chapter in the book titled, "Controversy to Credibility: Reforming Carbon Markets with Technology". (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/979-8-8688-2037-3_3)
All the technology in the world will not reform carbon markets. Even if it could, carbon markets do not address the climate crisis. They are a dangerous distraction from the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Carbon markets have made the climate crisis worse.