If You Want Farming to be a Climate Solution, Protect Farmworkers

The Intersection of Workers and Climate

I recently sat down with Ricardo Salvador, and got the chance to unpack what’s happening with carbon markets right now, and why it’s so important that the Biden administration *not* rush into participation in a carbon credit system that’s going to burn out when people realize that the economics got ahead of the science and it doesn’t actually deliver on the promises it makes.

This conversation got me thinking about that Einstein quote — you know the one:

In so many ways, the whole issue with carbon markets (and many other environmentally-motivated agricultural projects and movements afoot today) is that they’re simply the current players trying to fix a problem with the current system using the tools we used to create the problem in the first place. Folx love a “market-based solution” but what happens when the very market you’re trying to shape into a solution was the crux of the problem in the first place?

When I’m feeling optimistic, I like to believe that the days of us believing that the market is the only way to motivate necessary changes are behind us. I like to believe that we are capable of thinking on the systems level. Putting a price on carbon is a market-level approach, it assumes…