Of course, it’s better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I’d like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible.
I am definitely willing to pay to offset my carbon usage, but I’m under the impression that this is mostly a scam. Does anyone use these services? If so, can you tell me what reasoning or sources you used that satisfied you that the service your chose isn’t a scam?
Carbon offsets are a scam. John Oliver did a piece on them last year. Lots of it goes to existing forests (which doesn’t help offset new carbon usage) or to the development of mono-culture forests which have all sorts of issues.
Good to know. Link for the lazy.
I wish there were some effective way to invest in fighting climate change. God knows there’s plenty of money invested in the opposite direction.
The way that I’m contributing is my reducing my own usage. I don’t drive a car (electric bike or public transport) I removed the gas supply from my house, signed up with a renewable energy supplier, insulated the ever living shit out of my house including triple glazed glass and installed a Heatpump. Cost a small fortune but I can say I put my money where my mouth is!
There are climate friendly ETFs which are literally that.
I think the takeaway from that episode is that many carbon offsets are scams, not necessarily all. So don’t take corporate claims that they offset their emissions at face value, and consider carefully before you buy offsets.
Take a look at my other comment about Wren and Wendover Productions. (This John Oliver episode happens to include an excerpt from the Wendover piece I mentioned.)
Forests do not offset carbon emissions unless the trees never decay. Unless you’re burying them underground after you cut them down, this method is not removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Why does it need to be underground? If it’s processed into lumber (for houses, etc) the carbon is still removed from the atmosphere, it’s it not?
Second this, I recall reading up on mono-culture forests. I forget the source (maybe NYT) but the writer spoke of volunteering in Canada to plant trees and their practices basically planted incredibly combustible trees in very close proximity to one another. Those mono-culture forests are one of several reasons Canadian wild fires got out of control.
Wish I could the source, if anyone else remembers feel free to add.
Why? To ease your conscience by claiming that it is not as bad because you paid something extra? It’s the modern version of the selling of indulgences.
It’s worse than doing nothing because it gives the people the illusion that it’s not so bad - while in fact it is exactly as bad.
I am not against easing one’s conscience, so long as that’s not the only thing people do. It’s a perverse turn in our culture that we’ve started to shame people for trying to act morally. We have a conscience for a reason: to motivate good behaviour. This reminds me of the right’s claim that everything is “virtue signalling”, as if moral action itself is undesirable. It coheres with a hyper individualistic and self-interested worldview.
My question is precisely whether “in fact it is exactly as bad”. That is an empirical claim, not one that you can declare with a serene wave of the hand. That John Oliver reporting is useful in that regards, whereas your comment, devoid of argument or evidence, is not.
Seeking to ease one’s conscience by means of spending excess money is hyper-individualistic and conforms with a self-interested worldview.
The perverse thing is how neoliberalism has left people with the idea that they can meaningfully impact the world through deciding where they spend the pittance left them after their bosses and government warmongers have taken their cut.
If you give a shit about the environment stop believing the propaganda that market forces will be swayed by your hobby of guilt spending. It will be the hard work of organizing people and uprooting the financial interest who direct national and global policy.
Fair enough!
The problem is: Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, it’s there. It does damage. No money in the world will undo that, unless we build massive factories that extract CO2 from the atmosphere and make coal- or oil-like stuff that we put back in the earth. At the same moment your consumption blasts CO2 out in the atmosphere.
That does not exist. There is no system in place (except for some small but ludicrously expensive labs) that could do that.
Planting trees (or something similar) might help in a few decades, if the trees are still alive then and not being harvested. Until then the CO2 is in the atmosphere, doing its damage. Every day, every minute, every second.
Amen. Carbon offsets are currently being used as a marketing tactic to relieve the conscience of consumers so they wont slow down on their consumption, and keep buying stuff and funding industries that aren’t really as critical as they’d like to think they are.
It’s an excuse to delay trimming the fat for yet another couple years.
Carbon offsets are scam
It’s a scam. I’ve looked into it as part of my climate justice advocacy. There’s so so much fraud going on. Sometimes offsets pay for land grabbing of indigenous land even. It’s fucked.
I pay for refrigeration destruction, but that’s about it. It’s strongly verifiable, additional, and as permanent as can be. It’s through wren, which seems to be the most strict about credit quality since they removed all the other projects like cooking stoves and tree planting a while back leaving only refrigeration destruction and biochar, which also seems like a quality credit albeit many times more expensive than refrigeration destruction.
That said I don’t treat carbon credits as offsets, just an additional charity that I do on top of doing my best to be sustainable, reducing, reusing / repairing, and responsibly disposing of things. At the end of the day you can only do so much individually so the only way to do more is to put some of your extra money somewhere that might do a little extra good.
