In April 2021, a group of climate activists and grassroots organizations released the third edition of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, a popular education report that summarizes the false solutions to climate change proposed by neoliberal governments and private corporations. The report takes a critical lens of many of the current large-scale solutions being presented, such as the Paris Agreement or billionaires funneling donations into highly questionable climate “solutions.” Among these majorly corporate-oriented solutions, the report identifies a common theme: people in power tend to rely on pro-market policies and technological solutions to “get us out of this mess.” Yet, in doing so, they conveniently overlook the reality that these very same types of approaches are responsible for the current climate catastrophe in the first place.
The report criticizes these false solutions — “corporate snake-oil schemes and misguided market-based mechanisms,” as it calls them — that are actually neoliberal capitalism incarnate and ignore truly transformative solutions. In short, the Hoodwinked report is a “resource that dismantles the barriers to building a just transition and a livable future,” according to its website. In forty pages, this transformative document critiques twelve common climate solutions — carbon pricing, nature-based solutions, bioenergy, natural gas, hydrogen, landfill gas to energy, waste incineration, nuclear power, renewable energy, hydroelectricity, geoengineering, and carbon capture — and instead suggests truly transformative solutions for climate justice. We briefly summarize each category in this article — read the full report here.
Carbon Pricing Systems
Carbon pricing is arguably the most popular proposed solution to the climate crisis. It comes in many forms, namely cap and trade systems, a carbon tax, and the carbon offset markets. Some systems are better (or worse) than others, but all are predicated on a relatively simple conviction: carbon has a devastating environmental cost, so it should have a monetary cost as well. Attaching a price to carbon has been one of the only effective ways to change corporate and consumer behavior within a capitalist system predicated on monetary costs and benefits. Yet the report details the potential dangers of using such a market-based approach to solve climate change.
Carbon pricing, more specifically cap and trade systems, was originally introduced under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Cap and trade programs set a “cap” on carbon emissions and allow polluting corporations to purchase and sell carbon allowances within the predetermined limit. Carbon emissions are transformed into commodities to be bought and sold, similarly to how places and people are commodified within the capitalist status quo. Offset systems, by contrast, allow corporations to purchase or invest in decarbonization projects — also called “carbon sinks” — that “cancel out” their own emissions. But offset systems can be highly problematic, and subject to all kinds of abuse. Creating a valid measurement for the benefits of offset programs is incredibly difficult, and is often subject to manipulation or misrepresentation by corporate and government actors. Offsets can also be weaponized against Indigenous, Black, and low-income communities to restrict their land sovereignty and access. For example, a corporation could claim carbon offset credits for investing in reforestation in the Global South, theoretically offsetting the carbon emissions from their own industrial facilities elsewhere in the world. In actuality, the company could be buying virgin rainforest, deforesting it, selling the timber, then replanting the land to create palm oil plantations — all under the guise of “carbon offsets.” Though this would count as a carbon offset, it is an assault on nature, the climate, and the communities that rely on these forests for survival. It is a form of ecological imperialism.
Also within the realm of carbon pricing is a carbon tax, in which emitters must pay taxes on their carbon emissions, forcing them to pay for the costs their pollution imposes on society. The public, particularly the world’s most vulnerable people and places, has suffered the externalized costs of companies’ polluting practices since industrialization began. As such, a carbon tax seeks to place a monetary consequence on companies themselves for the damage they create. But if carbon taxes are not designed properly, imposing fees on polluters does little to deter them from polluting because the costs can be passed on to consumers and workers. Some carbon tax schemes also foster a system in which governments become reliant on the revenues, giving them little incentive to make long-term changes and/or encouraging them to continue placing their people in harm’s way.
Nature-Based Solutions
Agriculture and forestry offsets also fall under the category of nature-based solutions. On the surface, harnessing the natural carbon-storing power of land, forests, and soils sounds like a nice solution. However, many such solutions incorrectly assume that trees and soils can store unlimited amounts of carbon created from the burning of fossil fuels. When fossil fuels are extracted from their underground deposits and burned, they are released into the biosphere and upset the natural carbon cycles between the oceans, soils, and atmosphere. Trees are unable to endlessly absorb what is being released, which is one of the current narratives being pushed by corporations and neoliberal governments.
The forestry and timber industries have marketed industrial tree planting as a solution, claiming that younger trees have a greater ability to sequester carbon than older ones. This is false. The timber industry uses industrial monoculture methods, which reduce biodiversity, rely on copious amounts of chemicals, and harm Indigenous peoples and other communities who depend on diverse forests for their survival. Corporations also capitalize on the public’s fear of wildfires by promoting the false solutions of logging and forest thinning, which in reality only make forests more susceptible to fires. Excessive logging is the problem, and not the solution, to the impacts of climate change.
Though Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers — who are often women — provide over 70 percent of the world’s people with food, farmland is increasingly being taken over by a few multinational corporations. These corporations control the seeds and chemicals used for the agriculture industry, and push for unsustainable farming practices and contract farming that exacerbates global inequalities and puts farmers in debt. Under the status quo, the very same corporations at fault for practices that reduce biodiversity and increase agro-toxins hold the rights and patents to the new agricultural technology.
Biofuels
Biofuels have been portrayed as the clean alternative to fossil fuels in the transportation industry. But the production of corn and sugarcane ethanol, soya and palm oil biodiesel, and other forms of biofuels can create a harmful relationship between commodity food crops and fuel markets. Growing crops to produce biofuels requires immense amounts of land and fertilizers, sometimes encroaching on land essential for food production. The increased demand for land can also incentivize more land grabbing from marginalized populations and increase deforestation.
Another popular “solution” is burning biomass (ranging from trash, to trees, to wood waste) instead of coal — thought to be somehow “cleaner.” But burning biomass can create pollution that is equivalent to or worse than that of coal burning. The forestry industry has also begun to promote bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which claims to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by burning trees for energy, then subsequently capturing and sequestering the emissions. The sheer amount of land requirements for this process makes it impossible to implement BECCS on a large scale; it would create a greater demand for wood which would come from harmful tree plantations.
Natural Gas and Hydrogen
While natural gas has been advertised as the “least dirty” form of fossil fuels by corporations, its extraction has negative impacts on both people and the environment. Faulty supply chains and lax regulations have led to numerous methane leaks — a gas that traps even more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Furthermore, fracking, a common method for extracting natural gas, can severely weaken land, increase the risk of earthquakes, and endanger nearby communities. People who live close to fracking sites, often isolated rural communities, experience health issues, and contaminated water, air, and soil — not to mention the risk of land theft and violence against women from men working at the sites.
Similarly, hydrogen has also been painted by the oil and gas industries as a source of clean energy. But in order to be utilized as energy, hydrogen needs to be stripped off of hydrocarbons — an energy-intensive process that often consumes more energy than it produces. In addition, the production of hydrogen is often linked to dirty energy sources. In the US, some 95 percent of hydrogen is produced from natural gas. The logistics of hydrogen storage are also impractical and complicated, and come with serious risks, like making steel pipelines more brittle or increasing risk of explosions and fires.
Landfill Gas-to-Energy and Waste Incineration
Landfills are one of the largest human-made sources of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. As trash and organic material decompose, they release both methane and carbon dioxide. Large landfills in the US are required to capture gas, and claim to capture about 75 percent of it, but leaks and uncaptured emissions can cause illnesses including cancer in neighboring areas. One solution is Landfill Gas-to-Energy (LFGTE), in which landfills burn the emitted gas, converting most of the methane into carbon dioxide. Though this solution lessens the warming impacts of emitted gas, it still has negative consequences and can create other toxic pollutants, like nitrogen oxides. Furthermore, since LFGTE programs are subsidized by the government, some neighborhoods even cancel recycling and compost programs to maximize their subsidy, even though composting and recycling could discard almost 90 percent of landfill materials.
Waste incineration is even worse. Though converting waste to energy sounds like a renewable solution, the reality does more harm than good — for every 100 tons of trash burned, around 70 tons are turned into damaging air pollution. The other 30 turn into toxic ash, which is often deposited in landfills. Pollution from toxic incinerators can have devastating health consequences, causing various cancers, reproductive and birth issues, and respiratory diseases. In the US, this pollution primarily affects people of color, considering 78 percent of incinerators are located in neighborhoods with above-average percentages of BIPOC populations. Incinerators are also expensive, far more expensive to operate than even landfills — a new large-scale incinerator can cost up to $1 billion. Due to their high costs and health consequences, incinerators are a dying industry in many countries, including the US, but are still propped up by subsidies and outdated climate policies which claim that waste-to-energy is renewable energy.
Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is often lauded as a clean solution to reducing greenhouse gases, but in reality, can have serious environmental and health impacts. The nuclear fuel chain begins with mining uranium, which is highly destructive of the land. Mining and milling uranium also produces incredible quantities of radioactive waste, which can contaminate groundwater supplies and increase the risk of cancer for nearby communities. And the risk does not end when mining ends. There are over 15,000 abandoned uranium mines within the US, the majority of which are on Indigenous lands, which have caused cancer epidemics and other diseases. Furthermore, though nuclear reactors do not emit much carbon, the associated steps of mining uranium and transporting and storing radioactive waste, when taken together, can generate much higher quantities of carbon emissions than other renewable energy methods, like wind and solar power.
Nuclear power is also incredibly dangerous, causing disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, which devastated surrounding lands and can take decades to repair. And the likelihood of reactor meltdowns will only increase over time, as climate change causes rising sea levels and water temperatures, and the current reactors continue to deteriorate. Finally, building new nuclear reactors is too expensive and too slow. Most projects in the US fail because they take ten to fifteen years to construct and cost billions of dollars. In short, nuclear power is far from a risk-free, sustainable solution to climate change.
Geoengineering and Carbon Capture
Geoengineering refers to proposed technological solutions to change the climate on a large scale. One example is solar radiation management schemes, such as installing mirrors in Earth’s orbit, modifying clouds to make them reflect sunlight, and injecting sulfates into the atmosphere. While these “solutions” may sound outlandish or dystopian, some of them are gaining traction within corporate-funded energy initiatives.
One particularly popular geoengineering technique is carbon capture and storage — technologies that claim to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it. But though touted by some as a magic-bullet solution, carbon capture and storage strategies are still in their infancy and will require much more research to materialize. Moreover, scaling up carbon capture is technically challenging because of the sheer amount of energy it requires. It would also require massive amounts of new underground infrastructure, which could possibly prove unreliable. Plus, even minor carbon leaks release toxic gases, so a large-scale one — not unlikely given the many unknowns surrounding carbon storage technologies — could be deadly.
The outcomes of these large-scale techno-fixes are unpredictable and potentially catastrophic. These climate-altering technologies would have to be deployed at a mega-scale to have any significant impact, so any unforeseen consequences could be devastating. Geoengineering techniques also do not address the harms that power plants, pipelines, and other dirty energy sources are doing to frontline communities — and if these technologies end up doing more harm than good, it’s likely that frontline communities will bear the brunt. Even worse, government funding funneled into long-shot geoengineering projects could be better diverted towards realistic, transformative solutions. Ultimately, geoengineering is a product of corporations’ demands for new markets for their technologies and only gets in the way of a just transition to true, clean energy.
Renewable energy
Though renewable energy sources are certainly part of the solution, the term has also become very vague due to greenwashing. For instance, dirty energy sources like natural gas, LFGTE, biofuels and biomass, and hydrogen are sometimes falsely classified as renewables. But even the cleanest forms of renewable energy, like wind and solar, come with caveats. The transition to wind and solar must be a just one, run by and for communities rather than for-profit corporations. Solar panels and batteries require the mining of rare-earth metals, raising the risk of exploitation of the land and the people who work in the mines. When scaling up renewable energy projects, developers must be careful not to infringe upon Indigenous land, and must be considerate of natural ecological systems, like wildlife habitats. And the benefits from renewable energy sources should flow to those who have historically lacked access to reliable energy — a sustainable future is rooted in relocalizing and decolonizing. Furthermore, the “overdeveloped world” must reduce its consumption levels in order to foster equal access to it.
Real, Transformative Solutions
So, in the midst of so many false solutions, are there any sure-fire solutions to the climate crisis? Luckily, the report outlines six principles that can help underpin truly transformative climate solutions. Many false solutions rely on market-based, Eurocentric frameworks that try to solve climate change within the bounds of our status quo social systems. By contrast, truly transformative solutions address the root causes of the climate crisis, acknowledge the interconnectedness of said causes, and advance solutions that imagine a new social system. We summarize the report’s six principles below.
Real solutions to climate change must be guided by principled practice: these principles include environmental justice, just transition, and energy democracy. These principles, already developed by grassroots organizations, inform pathways for breaking away from white supremacy, neoliberal ideology, and reductionist thinking. They also require Participatory Action Research (PAG), which guides research of locally appropriate solutions that focus on those who are most harmed by climate change.
Real solutions must be guided by Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, place-based experience, and/or public-interest science. Drawing on humanity’s oldest knowledge of agriculture and social systems can provide a basis for building regenerative economies designed to heal our relationship with the environment and other forms of life. Agroecology and food sovereignty, as opposed to industrial agriculture, are used by Indigenous Peoples, peasants, and many small family organic farmers to reduce emissions and uphold social justice. These methods use regenerative practices to restore ecosystems while ensuring each person’s basic needs are met. A just transition will also require colonial states to gain Free, Prior and Informed consent (FPIC) from Indigenous Peoples for all climate strategies, and seek approval and wisdom from communities when creating them. It is also essential for climate research to be funded by the public and done in their interest, rather than those of corporations.
Real solutions must be holistic in tackling intertwined ecological and social harm. Strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must simultaneously consider associated ecological risks, like toxic co-pollutants, waste, and biodiversity destruction. This approach also takes into consideration the disproportionate poverty and pollution that affects marginalized communities and fosters a more egalitarian economy that is decolonized, democratized, demilitarized, and decommodified. A couple of examples of holistic solutions include refunding public transportation through reallocating fossil fuel subsidies and implementing zero waste solutions.
Real solutions must replace economies of greed with economies that serve ecological and human needs. Real solutions must analyze the lived experiences of the most marginalized communities to dismantle colonial rule and tailor a system that meets everyone’s needs. Instead of solutions based upon profit and greed, we should consider solutions that foster community and equity, like worker-owned cooperatives or mutual aid.
Real solutions must advance deep, direct, and participatory democracy, rooted in local self-determination. False solutions often benefit corporations, which do not have the interests of the people at heart. Instead, solutions must rein in the power of corporations and prioritize local, democratic policies informed by and designed for the benefit of all people.
Real solutions must center the leadership and needs of those presently and historically most harmed. Communities that have historically been and currently are most harmed by climate impacts must be centered when thinking about climate solutions — both to right past harms and prevent future ones. These communities include Indigenous Peoples, Black and Brown communities, women, and elderly peoples. Involving these populations in decision-making will also inform more just, more democratic solutions that benefit all populations.
Creating sustainable change relies on investing in grassroots movements, localized action, and global solidarity. It requires both social changes, like providing universal access to affordable housing, and ideological changes around gender constructs. In doing so, we must break away from neoliberal policies which prioritize corporations over people, and prioritize the communities that have been harmed the most by them. Class exploitation, the patriarchal and racial systems of oppression, and our neo-colonial, extractive global economy are directly linked to the destruction of Mother Earth. In short, we have the principles and knowledge we need to advance “real” solutions to the climate crisis.
Want to dive deeper? Read the whole report here.
