I originally published this article in Spanish in Gk.City. If you prefer to read it in the original Spanish, click here. If the purpose of this blog series is to argue that crypto is an important ingredient in helping carbon markets work in order to save the environment, we must…

In what follows I describe how carbon markets can help pull the planet back from the brink of environmental collapse, but in their current manifestation, they’re deeply flawed. The field of crypto, taking advantage of blockchain technology, can help solve many of the Carbon markets’ most pressing problems. By way…

By Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo Against all odds, Daniel Noboa is the new President of Ecuador. Even so, he’s not gloating. Instead of celebrating his victory with massive crowds at a rally in Quito or Guayaquil, Noboa welcomed the news in a sleepy beachside town called Olón, surrounded by friends and family…

When the Ecuadorian Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on August 8th, 2023, a mere 10 days before scheduled elections, the world became aware of sleepy Ecuador’s downward spiral. The country that for years seemed to escape the violence that plagued its drug-producing neighbors, Colombia and Peru, was now in…

I started this blog when I was an enthusiast of carbon markets and before I was a practitioner. I have now spent a fair amount of time working within the forest carbon industry, and my opinions on many matters have shifted. First, the planet is at a tipping point. As…

By Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo Please note that the opinions expressed here are my own and may not represent the views of my employer. I’ve been absent from this space lately because of travel. Specifically, I was in the United States building content for a forest carbon project that seeks to convert…

By Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo As is clear from the name of this blog, I see value in applying blockchain technology to carbon markets. If you’d like to receive my weekly newsletter about crypto, climate, and carbon, please sign up to my substack here. Having said that, there are a lot of…

by Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo At this point, we we have all of the data required to understand the dire consequences that await us if we do not take immediate actions to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stabilize the global temperature. Many environmentalists see carbon offsets as…

By Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo In a recent episode of Last Week Tonight, the weekly half-hour HBO show designed to expose fraud and injustice with a side dish of humor, the comedian John Oliver takes on the topic of carbon offsets. In his exposé, he gets many of the details right and…