04  /  The Manifesto

Six beliefs. One exchange.

We are building a market for the thing that has never had an honest price. This is what we believe, what we will do, and what we will refuse to do — written down so you can hold us to it.

MeasureBefore anything else
ReduceBefore you fund
RetireNever resell
Prove itOr do not claim it
Belief 01

We measure what we intend to change.

Every climate pledge made without a number behind it is a press release. Measurement is not the boring prelude to action — it is the action, because it is the only thing that tells you where the tonnes actually are.

And they are almost never where you think. On average a company’s supply-chain emissions are 11.4 times the size of its own operations. You cannot cut your way out of a footprint you have only measured the easy part of.

Supply-chain emissions versus own operations, on average (CDP)
65–95%Share of a typical corporate footprint sitting in Scope 3
0Jurisdictions that had adopted IFRS S1 & S2 by April 2026
Belief 02

Reduction comes first. Always.

There is an order of operations and it is not negotiable: cut, then substitute, then — only for what genuinely remains — fund mitigation elsewhere. Anyone who sells you step three as a replacement for step one is selling absolution, not climate action.

Humanity currently uses natural resources 1.7 times faster than the Earth can regenerate them. No credit market on any projection fixes that arithmetic. Only using less does.

1.7×Rate at which humanity consumes resources versus Earth’s regeneration
1Number of acceptable reasons to buy a credit: the tonne could not yet be cut
0Credits we will sell to a buyer with no reduction pathway
Belief 03

A tonne is a tonne, or it is nothing.

The voluntary carbon market shrank 29% in value in 2024, to $535 million on 84 million tonnes. That was not a failure of demand. It was buyers refusing to pay for tonnes they could not verify — and they were right to refuse.

Integrity is not the ethical garnish on this market. It is the entire growth mechanism. Which is why we start from CCP-assessed methodologies, read the project documents ourselves, and would rather sell nothing than sell a story.

$0mVoluntary carbon market transacted value, 2024 — down 29%
0%Of new issuances CCP-labelled in H1 2026, up from 9.7%
~107mCredits carrying the ICVCM CCP label to date
Belief 04

Retirement, not resale.

We hold no trading book. Every credit that moves through the exchange is retired — permanently cancelled in its registry, in the buyer’s name, with serial numbers you can check. It cannot be resold, re-issued or claimed twice.

This means we make no money from carbon going up in price. It also means nothing we sell is an investment, and we will never describe it as one. The return is the tonne, and the tonne is the point.

Duration of a retirement — a cancelled credit stays cancelled
~44mCCP-labelled credits already retired rather than held
58,428First-ever units issued under the Paris Agreement mechanism, Feb 2026
Belief 05

The majority is already with us.

89% of people worldwide want their government to do more about climate change. 69% would give 1% of their household income to fight it. And they believe only 43% of their neighbours feel the same.

That 26-point gap is the single cheapest thing to fix in all of climate policy, because nothing has to be invented — the support already exists. It just has to become visible. So we build in public, with numbers attached, out loud.

0%Want their national government to do more on climate
0%Would contribute 1% of household income
0%Is all we assume agree with us — a 26-point perception gap
Belief 06

The cost of waiting is already priced.

Carbon pricing raised over $107 billion for public budgets in 2025, covering roughly 28% of global emissions through 43 taxes and 37 trading systems. Border adjustments now reach across trade routes. The externality has a price and the price is spreading.

Set against that, unmitigated climate damage running toward $38 trillion a year by 2050 is not a distant risk. It is the bill arriving in instalments — and every year of delay makes the instalments larger.

$0bnRaised by carbon taxes and trading systems in 2025
0%Of global emissions now covered by a direct carbon price
$38TEstimated annual climate damage by 2050 on current trajectories
In practice

What we will
and will not do.

Beliefs are cheap. These are the operating rules that make them expensive for us to break.

Show the whole price

Project, country, vintage, registry, methodology, and our margin stated separately from the credit price. If you cannot see what we make, you cannot trust what we recommend.

Sell “carbon neutral” as a product

Neutrality is a claim about a whole organisation, earned through reduction and evidenced over time. It is not something we can hand you at checkout, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Give measurement away

Individuals measure for free, forever. A world where knowing your own footprint is a paid feature is a world that stays exactly as it is.

Offer credits as an investment

No yield, no appreciation, no resale market, no return of any kind. Credits bought here are retired. Anyone marketing carbon as a financial opportunity is describing a different business.

Publish our own number

Including the unflattering years. We measure Quantum Earth on the same basis we measure everyone else, and we put it where you can read it.

Bundle away the detail

No mystery portfolios hiding a cheap vintage behind an expensive story. Every tonne you retire is traceable to a project you could go and visit.

Figures on this page: CDP Scope 3 Upstream · IFRS Foundation adoption status · Ecosystem Marketplace SOVCM 2025 · ICVCM · UNFCCC PACM first issuance · World Bank carbon pricing · Andre et al., Nature Climate Change 2024 · UNDP Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024. Figures current August 2026.

We are powerful together.

Eighty-nine percent of the planet is already on this side of the argument. All that is left is to stop being quiet about it.

Quantum Earth Exchange — written August 2026, and revised whenever we learn we were wrong.