Recently, I ordered household supplies from a big online retailer in Switzerland. There is the option for "climate compensation" at the end of the order process, and I decided, as always, not to go for it.
My actions might surprise you when you know that I am involved with sustainability and Regenerative Finance (ReFi). But there are reasons—hear me out. I felt good when choosing not to compensate for the climate impact of my online shopping. And this feeling relates to my conviction that the current "compensation" market is deeply flawed.
Interest in the options we have to balance our impact on nature and the means of lowering or compensating for it has been growing in me for years. But based on analogies, namely humanitarian and philanthropic organizations, I assumed there must be a flaw. My skepticism made me suspicious because there is no such thing as a free lunch: Someone is making more money than they should and playing on my good conscious. I dug deeper into it and was quick to find out that the transparency in those compensation schemes is minimal. Of course, there are labels and trusted third parties, but ultimately, I want to track the money I put into such a scheme to its destiny.
As a result, I chose to build application pilots that allow for a better, more effective, more honest way of compensating nature for what we consume from it. I did a lot of thinking and tinkering. Ultimately, it led to the current project I am working on with my company and the effort of creating ReFi Zurich. And now we are finally organizing the upcoming Fall Gathering as the first in-person event of that form in Switzerland.
It all started with my curiosity about Bitcoin, which led me to accept a new paradigm: The combination of transparency, trustlessness, and immutable information storage with no single point of failure has a tremendous potential to disrupt many other industries besides fiat money. My inspiration is founded on this new paradigm and the wish to take action on climate change mitigation. I find this combined in the ReFi community and feel empowered to help this tiny sapling movement grow.
In Spring 2022, I met the right people ready to implement my ideas. Combining my experiences in community building and marketing for emerging technology companies, I felt prepared to step out of stealth mode. My intrinsic motivation is to contribute to causes more considerable than the sum of their parts and become active as a thought leader in my (local) community. I understood that I should help other people. Peers that share my frustrations with the current climate compensation schemes and the ways we try to establish balance with our surrounding ecosystems mostly. I want to address people who urge to create a safe future for humanity and co-create a space where they can interact and grow.
Back to the start: I feel good not playing along with the proposed "climate compensation" because I know that there is something more impactful, something bigger, that I can do. I am helping orchestrate a movement building on the next generation of climate change mitigation. I can access tools and assets that are transparent and (close to) trustless. For example, I can use Web3 to easily, quickly, and at a more suitable price buy carbon credits and retire them at my terms.
I am excited to finally meet many of the great minds in ReFi in person on November 26; stoked to deepen my understanding of the ecosystem, the technology in development, and the motivations behind the actors in our ReFi community. As I say so often: ideas are worthless, and execution is everything. ReFi Zurich will serve as a platform for this, bringing together ideas, makers, doers, and those who inspire all of it. Stay tuned!