illuminem

Collumnist

Copyleft

Consultant activist - Head of Innovation

Unknown

Head of innovation

EFFEKT

Arkitekt

WE Architecture

Architect

BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Intern

🚨 EXCLUSIVE — The verdict is in.

The most comprehensive review ever on carbon offsetting has just been published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

 And its message couldn’t be clearer:

 👉 We must urgently phase out fake carbon offsets
 👉 And cut emissions deeply and rapidly to reach near-zero by midcentury

Oxford calls it “the most comprehensive review of evidence on the effectiveness of carbon offsetting to date.”

https://lnkd.in/dVMcHgkQ

The Guardian calls it “a devastating blow to the idea that offsets can meaningfully cut emissions.”

After 25 years of data, the truth is undeniable:

“We must stop expecting carbon offsetting to work at scale. Almost everything up until this point has failed.” — Dr. Stephen Lezak, University of Oxford

https://lnkd.in/d5r6rAZU

These so-called “offsets” are meant to cancel out pollution — like paying to protect a forest, plant trees, or fund green projects while continuing to emit elsewhere.

But most don’t actually remove carbon from the atmosphere. They overpromise, underdeliver, and often collapse when forests burn, land use changes, or credits are double-counted.

In other words: they don’t erase emissions — they excuse them.

“These junk offsets are a dangerous distraction from the real solution: rapid and sustained emission cuts.” — Dr. Joseph Romm, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media

And the illusion goes beyond offsets.

The same false comfort underpins biomass energy and carbon storage in buildings — temporary tricks that make pollution look “neutral” while allowing industries to keep expanding.

This should be a turning point.
 We can’t buy our way out of the crisis. We can’t burn or build our way to balance.

https://lnkd.in/dU9eZetD

 The only honest path forward is to stop the harm at its source.
🔥 The science is clear. The moral path is, too.

Honesty — not offsets — is the new climate leadership.
What would it mean if we stopped pretending — and started transforming for real?

Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov

Founder, Consultant activist, Writer, human.

The world is absurd. 

“Imagine living in a society where Jane Goodall dies, and Charlie Kirk trends.
One gave her life to studying compassion.
The other built a grift convincing you empathy is weakness.”

Jane Goodall taught us what it truly means to be human — to listen, to care, and to live with compassion for all living beings. Through her gentle courage and unshakable hope, she reminded us that kindness is strength and that every small act of empathy can change the world. An extraordinary scientist, activist, and soul — she showed us the best of humanity. 

Qoute by by @_sjnkng

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⏰ Sustainability has become bullshit.

Not by accident — but by design.

It’s been stripped of its soul, turned into a metric, a market, a buzzword to feed the same system that caused the crisis in the first place.
We publish papers about transitions that never truly transition.
We build circular economies that still circle around growth.
We speak of regeneration while depleting what it actually means to be alive.

This isn’t a failure of ideas.
It’s a failure of honesty.

As Julian Kirchherr wrote in his 2023 paper “Bullshit in the Sustainability and Transitions Literature,” up to half of all sustainability research may already be “scholarly bullshit.”

But the truth goes deeper: sustainability itself has become a performance — a language of virtue serving the logic of extraction.

We’ve confused intelligence with wisdom.
Progress with productivity.
And the pursuit of truth with the performance of success.

But we can still refuse the game.
We can slow down. Write less. Mean more.
We can trade citations for conversations.
We can return to knowledge that humbles — not headlines that flatter.

Because the world doesn’t need more sustainability reports.
It needs people wise enough to stop pretending.

 Reclaim wisdom. Refuse the performance. Start again — in truth.

What would your work look like if you no longer had to play the game?

🌿 The Forest Knows What We Forgot

The most radical act of regeneration didn’t happen in a lab, a summit, or a corporate boardroom.

It happened when a country let go.

In the 1970s, Nepal’s hills were bare — forests gone, rivers choked, communities struggling to survive.

So the government did something almost no modern institution dares to do:
it gave the forests back to the people.

No decree. No billion-dollar plan. Just trust.
And the result?

The forests grew back.
The rivers cleared.
Life returned.

Because when you stop hoarding control and start sharing care, life organizes itself.

Our civilization was built on the illusion that control is safety —
that order comes from hierarchy, and knowledge from authority.
From the first kings who claimed divine right to the bureaucracies that promise efficiency,

 we’ve been trained to believe that stability depends on someone being in charge. Control feels comforting — especially when the world feels chaotic.
 It flatters the ego with the fantasy that complex systems can be tamed like machines. 

And it’s reinforced everywhere: 

 in schools that reward obedience over curiosity,
 in corporations where workers execute but do not decide,
 in politics that treats citizens as consumers rather than participants in collective care.

But the opposite of control isn’t chaos — it’s care.

Nepal’s forests remind us that regeneration begins not with mastery, but with trust.

 That flourishing isn’t commanded from above — it’s grown from within.
🌱 Read my new article in illuminem “Letting Go – Nepal” — what reborn forests reveal about power, care, and the way out of collapse.

Link to article:https://lnkd.in/d3GExpSC

🚨 OUTRAGE: Reports of Brutal Abuse — The World MUST NOT Look Away

Eyewitnesses and legal monitors are now reporting severe mistreatment of international activists detained after the Global Sumud Flotilla, including reports that Greta and others were beaten, deprived of basic needs, and subjected to degrading treatment. These activists stood in solidarity with Palestinians under siege — and are now facing the same violence they came to expose.

Their courage matters. They are witnesses to truth, risking their lives to hold power accountable. But above all, we must remember why they were there: to stand against an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by an imperialist state. Their suffering is part of a much larger atrocity — one that has unfolded for generations under occupation, blockade, and apartheid.

To stand with Greta and the other detained activists is to stand with Palestine. Their abuse is not an isolated incident — it’s the continuation of a system built on dehumanization and impunity. The goal must be clear: end the occupation, stop the genocide, and free Palestine.

We call on governments, human rights institutions, and the UN to:

• Demand an independent investigation into the treatment of detained activists and journalists.

• Suspend arms transfers and security cooperation with any actors implicated in human-rights violations.

• Hold perpetrators accountable through immediate legal and diplomatic action.

• Protect all activists, journalists, and civilians targeted for exposing state crimes.

• End the genocide in Gaza and across Palestine through immediate ceasefire, accountability, and international intervention.

Silence is complicity. Share the truth. Amplify their voices. Support the movements documenting these abuses.

The world must act — for Greta, for every detained activist, and for the Palestinian people whose freedom is long overdue. - link in comment to source.

Peace Without Justice Is Tyranny

A ceasefire agreement has been reached to halt the bombing of Gaza, the killing of entire families, and the starvation of a people. But let us be clear: until Palestinians are free to live on their land, return to their homes, and claim their full freedom, justice remains unfinished.

Free Palestine. Free Palestine.

By the brilliant Slow Factory — reminding us once again that everything is political. - 

link: https://lnkd.in/ddx_PxJB

‼️ European Environment Agency just Made Sustainability the New Language of Business as Usual.

Every five years, the European Environment Agency releases a major report on the state of Europe’s environment.
The 2025 edition is out — and it says all the right things.

It calls for reducing consumption, restoring ecosystems, ensuring fairness, building resilience, and living well within planetary boundaries.

In other words, it’s describing a degrowth transition — just without daring to use the word.

Instead, it’s all wrapped in the same comforting language of “competitiveness,” “sustainable prosperity,” and “green growth.”

And that’s exactly how the status quo stays alive.

Because the system has learned to speak the language of transformation without ever changing its foundations.
It can call for “reducing material demand” while still promising GDP growth.
It can praise “sufficiency” while subsidizing overproduction.
It can talk about “living within limits” while expanding industrial output and trade.

Every sentence that sounds revolutionary is followed by one that reassures markets that nothing fundamental will change.

The result?
A kind of ecological theatre — where institutions acknowledge collapse, publish the science, even map the planetary boundaries — yet remain trapped inside the very growth logic that caused the crisis.

Europe’s environmental agencies are not the villains here. They’re doing extraordinary work under political constraints. But what’s striking is how truth gets reformatted to fit ideology. The science says: we must consume less. The policy says: we can consume differently.

And in that tiny linguistic sleight of hand, the possibility of real change disappears.

We can’t “green” our way out of overshoot. We can’t “innovate” our way out of a system that requires more extraction every year.
If we’re serious about living within planetary boundaries, the conversation has to move from green growth to post-growth — from marketing sustainability to redistributing sufficiency.

Until then, we’ll keep producing beautiful reports about a world we refuse to build.

Link: https://lnkd.in/dsgdFkVJ

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