REDDisms: February 2026
An occasional series of the things people say about carbon trading, the climate crisis, and REDD.
This is the fourth in REDD-Monitor’s occasional series of REDDisms. Each post consists of ten quotations, nine of which are recent and one of which comes from my collection of REDDisms dating back to 2009.
“Plantations are forests in uniform. They look like soldiers all lined up in ranks, and that is what they are. Dressed in green, they march off to the world market. The hymns that sing their praises in the name of our Mother Earth are lies. Industrial forests are to natural forests what military music is to music, and what military justice is to justice.”
Eduardo Galeano, writer, September 2009
“Real zero is simply stopping the burning of fossil fuel. That is a very simple equation. When are you going to stop burning fossil fuel? Name the date. Then you will be giving your shareholders a lower cost and more competitive cost of energy.”
Andrew Forrest, chairman of Fortescue Metals Group, January 2026
“Problems establishing the environmental integrity of carbon credits have mounted in recent years, with multiple academic studies demonstrating that the emissions claimed to have been reduced or avoided by many projects have not materialised or are grossly overestimated.”
Michael Mazengarb, head of corporate accountability at Climate Integrity, January 2026
“One thing I’ve noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses, and the worse that country is doing. China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China.”
Donald Trump, January 2026
“There is so much money in the market that couldn’t give a flying fuck about this stuff. Oil and gas analysts are generally not building climate risk into their models. There is zero chance that any of these groups are going to divest from oil or gas companies any time soon. You still get investors in the U.S. who don’t believe in climate change. These guys honestly couldn’t give a stuff.”
An investor, quoted by Brett Christophers, Uppsala University, February 2019
“We need to make business with nature. We need to make sure that everybody understands that nature can be good business.”
Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s secretary of the environment and natural resources, January 2026
“We are seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”
Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, January 2026
“Green colonialism reflects a long-standing imbalance in global political and economic power. Industrialized nations built wealth through centuries of fossil fuel use and environmental degradation. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Africa accounts for roughly 3-4 percent of current global greenhouse gas emissions, despite being among the regions most exposed to climate impacts. Yet as countries pursue net-zero targets, many land-based climate solutions such as tree planting, carbon sequestration, biodiversity offsets, are being implemented in the Global South, particularly Africa.”
Peter Ongera, Kenyan journalist, February 2026
“In academic tradition, an anatomy offers a comprehensive and systematic exploration of a phenomenon or body of literature. Despite our original intention to follow this path and provide a detailed study of the voluntary carbon market (VCM), we were quickly confronted with a stark reality: we stand in front of a dead body. The market displays clear signs of systemic failure: disrupted price trends, stagnating credit retirements, and a persistent lack of transparency among market actors.”
Ugo Panizza, Francesco Tripoli, and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, January 2026
“We conclude that social-ecological complexity fundamentally undermines the reliability of causal attribution in offset projects and considerably limits their ability to meaningfully contribute to mitigating climate change.”
Pushpendra Rana, Forrest Fleischman, and Amit Sharma, January 2026