For decades, new government policies and activism have helped us make big strides in environmental protection. However, the world continues to see higher temperatures, leading to severe weather events, flooding, drought, wildfires, and more. But what environmental challenges should we focus on moving forward to ensure we’re heading in the right direction to slow, stop, or even reverse climate change?
Below, we review the biggest environmental problems of 2024 and beyond to help you understand what areas we must focus on to reach our climate goals.
What Will Be the Biggest Environmental Problems of 2024?
The U.S. and the entire world face many immediate environmental issues, but some are more pressing and time-sensitive than others. Let’s review the six biggest environmental issues the U.S. faces as we near 2024.
1. Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels, whether oil, natural gas, or coal, remain a critical environmental issue as we near 2024. Burning these fuels for energy — powering a vehicle or generating electricity — is the leading cause of climate change, as it makes up over 75% of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) worldwide and 90% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. If we’re looking to slow global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we must halve our fossil fuel emissions by 2033.
The need to cut our fossil fuel emissions within a decade makes limiting our reliance on fossil fuels the most pressing environmental issue the U.S. faces in 2024. Doing this requires help from several industries and consumers, as a large portion of fossil fuel emissions come from both transportation and power generation.
Automakers must continue pushing for green vehicle development, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and other alternative fuels, and consumers must be willing to adopt this technology.
But also, the power-generation industry must continue moving away from gas-, coal-, and oil-fired power plants and switch to green and renewable energy generation, such as hydropower, wind, and solar. Consumers can also do their part by switching to providers offering green options, if available, and even take matters into their own hands by installing solar panels on their homes.
2. Deforestation
The U.S. population continues to grow annually, and the more it grows, the land use to build houses, roads, and other structures increases. Building these structures often results in deforestation. This urbanization of forested land has several serious consequences.
First, trees are carbon sinks, meaning they absorb carbon from the air. Once we cut them down, we eliminate that absorption. And with CO2 emissions being a huge contributor to global warming, we can’t risk eliminating these carbon-absorbing natural resources.
Second, urbanizing forested land impacts wildlife and their habitats and ecosystems, resulting in biodiversity loss and displacement, which can eventually threaten the very existence of certain species.
3. Air Quality
The air quality in the U.S. has improved over the years. From 2021 to 2022, air pollution was lower in eight of every 10 cities, according to NBC News research. What’s more, these clean air improvements span back to 1980, so we’ve been on the right track for over 40 years. However, now’s not the time to take the foot off the accelerator, as it’s easy to go backward.
Various industries need to continue finding ways to limit their emissions. Automakers must continue finding ways to limit the pollutants their vehicles emit. And most of all, consumers must continue pushing industries to make changes by supporting those who’ve made the efforts. Consumers must also be willing to adopt new, reduced-emission transportation and other emission-reducing technology as it becomes available in 2024 and beyond.
4. Drinking Water
Drinking water is often taken for granted in the U.S., but recent water-contamination crises in Mississippi, Michigan, Maryland, and Hawaii show that this issue can affect us too. Some of this is the result of old pipes and aging infrastructure, but it also has a lot to do with climate change.
Climate change has resulted in extreme weather conditions that can result in severe flooding that puts added strain on aging drinking water infrastructures. And should this rainwater infiltrate the drinking water supply, it could bring pollutants and toxins along with it, making the freshwater undrinkable.
5. Waste
As the U.S. population grows, so does its consumption. And the more consumption we have, the more waste we produce. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average American creates 4.9 pounds of solid waste daily. While some of this waste goes to recycling, composting, or is burned for energy production, 50% of it — 146 million tons annually — heads to landfills.
When this waste is in landfills, it doesn’t just decompose and disappear. Instead, as it decomposes, it releases methane, which is 80 times worse than CO2 when contributing to climate change because it traps significantly more heat.
Making matters worse, not all this trash ends up in landfills. Much of it, including plastic waste, ends up in the oceans. This plastic pollution can severely impact marine ecosystems and animals.
To help with this, companies must rethink their packaging, using recyclables or reusable packaging where possible. Consumers should try to support those companies making an effort to reduce wasteful packaging as well as reuse and recycle packaging when possible.
6. Natural Resources
As our population grows, so does our demand for natural resources. If our demand exceeds the supply, we risk natural resource depletion, which is when we consume them faster than they are replaced. An example of natural resource depletion would be removing fish from the ocean for food at a rate that exceeds their breeding rate. And this can apply to any natural resource, whether it’s renewable or not, including water, fossil fuels, trees, and more.
Natural resource depletion can lead to many issues, including water shortages, oil shortages, loss of forested lands, mineral depletion, and even species extinction.
Through policies limiting resource use, we can help ensure plenty of natural resources are available for future generations. Also, we can use technology to find new and renewable resources to replace more limited natural resources.
What Will Be the Biggest Environmental Problem in the Future?
While future generations will likely have plenty of environmental problems to tackle, one stands head and shoulders above all others. That’s climate change. A whopping 97% of science papers agree that human activities have led to the climate crisis known as global warming.
Global warming and climate change are about more than just warmer temperatures. They can cause other serious issues, including rising ocean levels impacting coastal cities and states; dramatic climate events, such as long droughts or massive flooding; and the extinction of certain species. This is why it’s so critical to get the problem under control.
All that said, slowing and reversing climate change isn’t something that’ll happen quickly. It will take many years of incremental improvement before we reach our goals.
We have pieces of the puzzle in place, such as the Paris Agreement, a United Nations pact to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius annually through emissions reductions and to eventually attain net-zero emissions, among other climate-focused initiatives. Thus far, the Paris Agreement has been a mixture of successes and failures, but it is just one piece of a large puzzle to slow and stop climate change.
What Are the Facts About Climate Change in 2023?
Burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and unsustainable power generation are some of the biggest environmental issues facing us in the future. But these all point back to one critical result, the need to slow and ideally reverse climate change through aggressive climate action, such as clean energy.
As mentioned earlier, climate change is the biggest environmental problem of 2024 and beyond, so let’s review some of the facts about climate change as of 2023.
2023 Is Likely to Be One of the Warmest Years Ever
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information outlook, 2023 has a 99% chance of being one of the 10 warmest years on record. There’s also an 89% chance it’ll be one of the five-warmest years on record.
And through May 2023, this prediction has proven true, as it’s been the fourth-warmest year ever. May was particularly warm, ringing in as the third-warmest May on record.
The Water Cycle Is Intensifying
A rising global climate is also bringing about more intense water cycles. This increases the risk and severity of sudden flooding and long droughts. Experts anticipate increased rainfall in higher latitudes and decreased rainfall in the subtropics.
Sea Ice Is Hitting Record Lows
Sea ice — a key indicator in global warming — has hit extreme lows in 2023. This year, the Arctic sea ice extent reached its third-lowest level recorded in January 2023 at 5.15 million square miles. That is roughly 243,000 square miles less than the average between 1991 and 2000.
The Antarctic ice extent was even worse, checking in at 1.25 million square miles in January, 700,000 square miles less than the 1991 to 2000 average and a new record low.
This melting sea ice contributes to rising sea levels, which can lead to even more severe coastal flooding.
Oceans Are Warming and Becoming More Acidic
As global temperatures rise, so does the temperature of our oceans. Ocean water expands as it warms, compounding the coastal flooding mentioned earlier. Also, the ocean can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, but this results in the ocean becoming more acidic, threatening sensitive marine species and damaging key ecological settings, such as coral reefs.
You Can Do Your Part to Impact the Biggest Environmental Problems of 2024
One of the biggest environmental problems of 2024 is climate change fueled by human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. Fortunately, you can do your part to reduce your carbon footprint and help slow climate change.
One step you can take is to offset some of your carbon footprint by purchasing voluntary carbon credits. These carbon credits help fund green projects that reduce emissions. Not sure where to start? Check out Terrapass’s wide selection of voluntary carbon credits. You can then choose the one that suits you and know you’re helping push us in the right direction.
Brought to you by terrapass.com
The post What Will Be the 6 Biggest Environmental Problems of 2024? appeared first on Terrapass.
What auditors actually test, where projects actually fail, and the contract clauses that protect you before signature.
The meeting happens about fourteen months after the contract was signed. Your assurance provider has reached the nature-based investment line in your Scope 3 file, and the partner across the table has exactly two questions. How do you know the reductions happened? And how do you know they would not have happened anyway?
The first question is MRV: measurement, reporting, and verification. The second is additionality. Between them, they decide whether your nature-based investment counts, in your inventory, in your disclosure, and in front of your board. Everything else in the project documentation is supporting material for these two answers.
This article walks through what each question actually tests, where projects most commonly fail, what digital MRV has changed (and what it has not), and the contract clauses that protect you. The goal is to give you the diligence framework before you sign, because after the credit issues is the wrong time to discover the answers were weak.
What MRV actually verifies
MRV is the machinery that turns a field intervention into a defensible number. Measurement covers the data: biomass surveys, soil sampling, remote sensing, activity records from participating farms. Reporting covers the translation of that data into claimed reductions under a recognised methodology. Verification covers the independent check: an accredited third party tests the reporting against the methodology and the evidence.
The methodologies live in registries. Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard and the Gold Standard are the two largest for nature-based projects, and each publishes the methodology documents, monitoring requirements, and verification protocols that a project must follow. The ICVCM Assessment Framework now sits above the registries, assessing whole methodologies against the Core Carbon Principles and granting the CCP label to those that pass.
For a buyer, the practical questions are concrete. What is the monitoring frequency, and is it specified in the project design document or left vague? Who is the verifier, how were they selected, and how often do they rotate? What raw data do you, the buyer, get access to, and in what format? A project that answers these in writing is a different procurement than one that answers them in a sales call.
What additionality actually proves
Additionality asks whether the intervention caused the reduction, or whether the reduction would have happened anyway. The test is a counterfactual: what would this landscape, this farm, this forest have done without the project’s money?
Three forms matter in practice. Financial additionality asks whether the project needed the carbon revenue to proceed. Regulatory additionality asks whether the activity was already required by law. Common-practice additionality asks whether the activity is already standard in the region, in which case paying for it buys you nothing the world was not getting for free.
The reason additionality dominates audit conversations is recent history. Research published in 2023, including the Science paper examined at length in our piece on conventional offsets and boardroom credibility, found that a large share of REDD+ credits failed the counterfactual test because baselines were inflated. The market response was a wave of methodology revisions at Verra and the arrival of independent ratings agencies whose entire business is re-testing additionality claims. The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative publishes transparent scoring of methodologies on exactly this dimension, and it is free to consult before you sign anything.
Where projects most commonly fail the test
Five failure modes account for most of the wreckage.
- Inflated baselines. The counterfactual assumes more deforestation, more degradation, or lower yields than the evidence supports. The claimed reduction is the gap between reality and the baseline, so an inflated baseline manufactures reductions from nothing.
- Unaccounted leakage. The project protects one forest and the logging moves to the next valley. The methodology is supposed to net this out; weak projects estimate it optimistically.
- Thin permanence protection. Nature-based carbon can reverse: fire, pest, drought, or a change of landowner. Buffer pools and insurance mechanisms exist for this, but their adequacy varies enormously between projects.
- Attribution and double counting. In supply chain settings, the same reduction can be claimed by the supplier, the buyer, and a credit purchaser unless contracts prevent it. Our Insetting vs Offsetting piece covers the inventory rules; the point here is that the auditor will ask who else is counting this tonne.
- Stale monitoring. Data collected at validation and never refreshed. The IPCC AR6 Working Group III land-sector chapter documents how quickly carbon stocks respond to disturbance; a three-year-old measurement is a historical artifact, not a current claim.
What digital MRV changes, and what it does not
Digital MRV is the genuine improvement in the field. Satellite remote sensing, including the free archives at NASA Earthdata, allows biomass and land-cover change to be monitored continuously rather than at multi-year verification intervals. Soil carbon models calibrated with physical sampling reduce the cost of agricultural measurement. The practical effect is more frequent data at lower cost, which compresses the window in which a problem can hide.
What digital MRV does not change is judgment. Baselines are still human decisions about counterfactuals. Additionality is still an argument, not a measurement. Research groups such as the Oxford Smith School have been clear on this point: better sensors improve the M in MRV, but the integrity questions live in the assumptions, and assumptions need governance, not gadgets.
For a buyer, the test is simple. Ask the provider what is measured by instrument, what is estimated by model, and what is assumed by methodology. A provider who can answer that question crisply understands their own evidence chain. A provider who cannot is selling you their confidence rather than their data.
What to require in your contract
The diligence above converts into five contract clauses.
- Monitoring cadence and buyer data access, specified by dataset and frequency.
- Verifier independence, named accreditation, and rotation terms.
- Baseline revision triggers, so the counterfactual updates when the methodology or the evidence changes.
- Reversal liability and buffer adequacy, with the mechanism named and sized.
- Documentation handover in audit-ready form, so the evidence file your assurance provider needs already exists.
None of these clauses is exotic. All of them are absent from weak contracts, and their absence is the most reliable early signal that the MRV and additionality answers will be weak too.
If you are evaluating a nature-based investment and want the MRV and additionality stress-tested before signature rather than after, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can run that review against any project on your shortlist, and design nature-based supply chain investments where the evidence chain is built audit-first. Schedule a consultation.
Sources and further reading
- ICVCM: Core Carbon Principles Assessment Framework
- Verra: Verified Carbon Standard
- Gold Standard for the Global Goals
- Carbon Credit Quality Initiative: Methodology quality scores
- University of Oxford Smith School: Sustainable finance research
- IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Chapter 7: AFOLU
- NASA Earthdata satellite remote sensing archive
EU Directive: Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT)
The EU Directive, Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition (ECGT), takes effect on September 27, 2026.(1) The goal of ECGT is to protect consumers by ensuring that environmental claims are fair, understandable, and reliable. This regulation does create a new compliance requirement for businesses, but it also provides sustainability and marketing teams with important guidance that helps create consistency in sustainability communications.
Key takeaways
- ECGT takes effect September 27, 2026, and prohibits claims that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive environmental impact based on offsetting alone.
- Named example phrases the regulation prohibits include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint.
- ECGT does not want to deter investment in carbon credits. It wants companies to communicate the real benefits of the projects they support instead.
- SBTi’s guidance recommends framing carbon credits as taking responsibility for ongoing emissions, not as making a product or company neutral.
- Voluntary carbon projects deliver real climate progress: reducing super-pollutants, protecting and restoring ecosystems, and supporting communities.
Regarding carbon credits specifically, voluntary carbon projects deliver important climate progress and environmental benefits that provide many talking points for companies. They reduce climate super-pollutants by removing industrial emissions like methane, N2O, HFCs and others. They protect and restore valuable ecosystems and carbon sinks like forests, mangroves and grasslands. They help communities by reducing local pollution, creating employment opportunities, improving access to healthcare, and more.
The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a global leader in business climate action, concludes that alongside aggressive decarbonization, we should also use high quality carbon credits to take responsibility for our ongoing emissions. SBTi recognizes that carbon credits are important “to help limit temperature overshoot, mitigate transition risks, and support climate solutions.”(2)
ECGT language on carbon offsetting says that they do not want to deter investment in carbon credits. They just want companies to focus on communicating the benefits of the projects they support and avoid claims beyond the scope of carbon credits, which is good for everyone, companies and consumers alike.
The regulation reinforces that carbon credits do not change the sustainability of your products, so carbon credit buyers should not suggest that their products are more sustainable because of carbon credits. Instead, companies need to promote their climate contributions as a way to compensate or take responsibility for their carbon emissions by supporting projects that do great things like reducing global carbon emissions, reducing pollution, preventing deforestation, restoring forests, and more.
ECGT language related to carbon offsetting
The regulation is particularly focused on prohibiting claims, based on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, that a product or service has a neutral, reduced, or positive impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. These claims are prohibited in all circumstances because they mislead consumers into believing the claim relates to the product itself, or to how it was made and supplied, or into thinking that using the product carries no environmental impact at all.
Named examples of prohibited claims include:
- climate neutral
- CO2 neutral certified
- carbon positive
- climate net zero
- climate compensated
- reduced climate impact
- limited CO2 footprint
These claims are only allowed when they rest on a product’s actual lifecycle impact, not on offsetting emissions outside that product’s value chain, since the two are not equivalent. This prohibition does not stop companies from advertising their investments in environmental initiatives, including carbon credit projects, as long as they present that information in a way that is not misleading and that meets the other requirements of Union law.(1)
SBTi also provides guidance on climate contribution language in its Corporate Net Zero Standard Version 2.0 Draft for Second Public Consultation, November 2025. While the SBTi language is fairly technical, it has a good framework for crafting a climate contribution message.
SBTi Language for Carbon Credits(3)
- Take responsibility for ongoing emissions by delivering mitigation impact contributions
- Carbon credits certify the mitigation outcomes of projects that reduce, avoid, or remove carbon emissions
- Activities that reduce emissions from emission sources not located within the company’s value chain
- Activities that conserve, protect, and enhance natural carbon sinks
- Activities that capture and store carbon in storage pools
SBTi’s draft standard also walks through sample claim language for this kind of contribution. In general, the samples move from a simple percentage statement, to naming a specific verified tonnage tied to that percentage, to a fuller statement that breaks the tonnage into reductions versus removals. Across all three, the framing stays consistent: a company took responsibility for a defined share of its ongoing emissions over a set period, by funding a specific, verified amount of mitigation, achieved through emission reductions or removals.(3)
FAQ: ECGT and Carbon Credit Claims
When does the ECGT directive take effect?
The rules apply across the EU from September 27, 2026, after member states transposed the directive into national law by March 27, 2026.
Does ECGT ban carbon offsetting?
No. It bans specific marketing claims that a product or service is environmentally neutral, reduced impact, or positive based on offsetting. Advertising investment in carbon credit projects themselves is still allowed if it is not misleading.
What phrases does ECGT specifically prohibit?
Named examples include climate neutral, CO2 neutral certified, carbon positive, climate net zero, climate compensated, reduced climate impact, and limited CO2 footprint, when those claims are based on offsetting rather than a product’s actual lifecycle impact.
How should a company describe its carbon credit purchases instead?
SBTi’s guidance recommends stating the specific verified tonnage of emissions reductions or removals funded and describing that as taking responsibility for a defined share of ongoing emissions, rather than claiming the company or product is neutral.
Does this rule apply to company level sustainability claims too?
ECGT is focused on claims about specific products and services in consumer marketing. Broader company level sustainability communication is a separate matter still governed by other existing rules.
While ECGT does add a new compliance burden for businesses, it helps create consistency in sustainability messaging that is important to building confidence in voluntary carbon projects and scaling the industry to help us achieve progress on global carbon emissions.
Disclaimer: Terrapass does not provide legal or regulatory advice. Any interpretation of regulation must be approved by your legal representative.
References:
(1) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/825/oj
(2) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/Corporate-Net-Zero-Standard-version-2.pdf
(3) https://files.sciencebasedtargets.org/production/files/CNZS-V2-Second-Consultation-Draft.pdf
The post The EU’s New Green Claims Rules and Carbon Credits appeared first on Terrapass.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
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