The Download: Apple’s eucalyptus carbon bet, and climate tech’s bad vibes

“We were losing the light, and still about 20 kilometers from the main road, when the car shuddered and died at the edge of a strange forest. The grove grew as if indifferent to certain unspoken rules of botany. There was no understory, no foreground or background, only the trees themselves, which grew as a wall of bare trunks that rose 100 feet or so before concluding with a burst of thick foliage near the top. The rows of trees ran perhaps the length of a New York City block and fell away abruptly on either side into untidy fields of dirt and grass. The vista recalled the husk of a failed condo development, its first apartments marooned when the builders ran out of cash.” This is the opening to our latest Big Story, which we are excited to share today. It’s all about how Apple (and its peers) are planting vast forests of eucalyptus trees in Brazil to try to offset their climate emissions, striking some of the largest-ever deals for carbon credits in the process. The big question i ... Read full article.