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2024-06-15
OK so the full essay is pretty freakin' long, and a friend smartly suggested a bite-sized version would be good - and they're right, so here it is :)
For the full 2-part essay:
The OpenEarth Foundation is a non-profit that only came on my radar because I noticed it was the employer of ActivityPub co-author Evan Prodromou. In Part 1 of this deep dive, we take a look at their sources of funding. While a good chunk of OpenEarth's money comes from several grants from large US-based philanthropic organizations, most of their funding was raised through two NFT auctions in 2021 - and most of *that* money came from the sale of a single Beeple NFT to crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who paid an astonishing $6 million for it at the height of the NFT craze.
Indeed, the OpenEarth Foundation seems to be surrounded with cryptocurrency folks - they have collaborated with (and/or received grants from) companies like Chainlink, Klima, Regen Network, among others. Central to the crypto-based fundraising efforts is the Social Alpha Foundation, founded by former Sotheby's art dealer and crypto-evangelist Jehan Chu, who is credited with the idea for the first NFT auction, and also who recruited the artists who donated their work.
Finally, we looked at the non-profit's financials; tax filings indicate that in 2022, the OpenEarth Foundation took heavy losses on its asset holdings, not only due to the stock market downturn, but also the crash in the crypto market, including (but definitely not limited to!) a complete loss of over $50k on the Terra Luna debacle.
Part 2 begins with a profile of OpenEarth founder and director Martin Wainstein. A self-described "serial entrepreneur", Wainstein has a philosophy that is a strange blend of spiritualism, tech-solutionism, and market capitalism - and he seems to gravitate toward whatever technology has the most hype around it at any given moment.
OpenEarth's projects reflect this philosophy through and through. At COP27, Wainstein presents a panel discussion of "Nature Based Currencies". NBCs are blockchain-based assets that are meant to represent, in financial terms, the 'ecosystem health of a bio-region' - for instance, its ability to absorb CO2, or its biodiversity.
Additionally, the valuations of these tokens is apparently to be performed automatically, with little human intervention, via intensive surveillance: Wainstein imagines linking satellite imagery, drones, IoT sensors, etc into this system.
This is pitched as having, roughly speaking, two potential applications: one is as a way for any entity (government, municipality, corporation, individual landowner) to create these tokens to fund a conservation effort, with, on the other side of the transaction, the buyer being an entity that wants to 'offset' its carbon emissions; the second application mentioned is the scaling of so-called 'debt-for-nature swaps'.
Both of these applications have enormous downsides which are not addressed by OpenEarth - although the panelists at this COP27 talk do raise objections!
For starters, carbon offsets are ineffective when it comes to actually reducing carbon emissions, and the claims made are often wildly overstated; in short, carbon offsets are not a path to limiting global warming. Secondly, putting assets like these on the blockchain creates the potential for speculators to make money betting *against* ecosystem health.
As for 'debt-for-nature swaps': These schemes, combined with the surveillance-derived valuation method described, seem like an almost certain path toward eco-colonialism (or 'green imperialism') at an even larger scale than already exists; carbon offset schemes are already widely criticized as promoting this dynamic.
psmag.com: "How the Green New Deal Can Avoid Climate Colonialism"
These schemes mean very little if their platform has no user base, but it's possible they've found a way to bootstrap one.
Someone who appears to be quite intertwined with OpenEarth's overall project is Catherine Atkin, lawyer and architect of California's bill SB-253, which sets out emissions reporting requirements for all large companies doing business in the state. Contained within the bill are specific criteria regarding what organizations are allowed to receive the contract to run the emissions reporting platform. These requirements seem to heavily favour the chances of an org like OpenEarth, who have also been building emissions-reporting platforms. Being awarded this contract would mean that several thousand companies, including many of the largest corporations on the planet, would immediately be required to use OpenEarth's reporting platform.
Furthermore, the accounting system used in the bill - the GHG Protocol - allows companies to include carbon offsets alongside their Scope 1, 2, & 3 emissions. Having a guaranteed userbase of companies with fresh incentive to make their numbers look good provides the perfect conditions in which to create a massive carbon offset and/or 'nature-based-asset' marketplace. Again: carbon offsets are useless in terms of emissions reduction.
Part 2 concludes with a brief look at the wider push by moneyed interests to expand the financialization of the snowballing climate catastrophe.