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Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

arstechnica.com

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Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#51

Post by finite_depth »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #17
Explore3003 wrote: post #6

The money going towards carbon offsets would be better spent on lobbying in favor of carbon taxes, and establishing Enhanced Weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering

> lobbying in favor of carbon taxes This is deeply unpopular with the electorate, and for very good reason. When the only "solution" to "fighting" global warming is to levy more taxes on the middle class, increase food and construction costs, and cripple developing nations' ability to build industry -- when elites fly around the world on private jets (that spew more CO2 in 6 hours than I will create in 10 years), and…

[dead]

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#52

Post by mrshadowgoose »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #43
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #40

The issue is that carbon offsets are poorly defined/regulated and are therefore almost never "honest". The definition of "honest" here, is that a purchased offset should represent a unit of carbon that has already been removed from the atmosphere. Instead, we have "offsets" that claim to remove carbon at some arbitrary point in the future, or worse, are an "expected reduction of carbon output of some nebulous project…

> Today's cost of atmospheric carbon capture is several hundred dollars / ton. For stuff like direct air capture, not for afforestation.

Same issue of "honesty" with afforestation-based credits. A ton of carbon removed during the growth of a new tree is not equivalent to a ton of carbon already removed today.

However, as these types of projects actually do remove carbon, one could probably compute an adjustment factor and purchase additional credits to achieve an "honest" offset.

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#53

Post by panarchy »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #39
postmodest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "researchers" rake in grant money based on promoting apocalyptic levels of fear This is a bad take. We are currently living in apocalyptic levels of REALITY. The people saying what you just said, but twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, were speaking out against the warnings that--if we'd acted in them instead of attacking the messenger as you did-- could've kept us from global wildfire and heat domes.

The world isn't actually going to end.

No, but our quality of life sure will (and already has for some people)

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#55

Post by emodendroket »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #52
quixoticelixer- wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today's cost of atmospheric carbon capture is several hundred dollars / ton. For stuff like direct air capture, not for afforestation.

Same issue of "honesty" with afforestation-based credits. A ton of carbon removed during the growth of a new tree is not equivalent to a ton of carbon already removed today. However, as these types of projects actually do remove carbon, one could probably compute an adjustment factor and purchase additional credits to achieve an "honest" offset.

That's assuming the afforestation is even helpful and not one of the various examples of incentives for planting trees leading to work that's actually doing more harm than good.

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#56

Post by mrshadowgoose »

emodendroket wrote: post #55
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same issue of "honesty" with afforestation-based credits. A ton of carbon removed during the growth of a new tree is not equivalent to a ton of carbon already removed today. However, as these types of projects actually do remove carbon, one could probably compute an adjustment factor and purchase additional credits to achieve an "honest" offset.

That's assuming the afforestation is even helpful and not one of the various examples of incentives for planting trees leading to work that's actually doing more harm than good.

Out of all the nebulous carbon offset schemes that exist today, afforestation seems to be one of the least scammy options if ones adjusts for the fact that "future value" != "present value". Even the uncertainty of the long-term success of afforestation projects can be statistically modelled and incorporated into an adjustment factor. However, nobody is going to willingly do that, so even those types of offsets will remain dishonest.

Absent regulation, carbon offsets are a race to the bottom in producing the cheapest "offset" just hovering above the threshold of "fraudulent".

Direct air capture with long-term sequestration, performed prior to the sale of a carbon credit, is the only scheme that is remotely close to being fully honest.

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#57

Post by InexSquirrel »

emodendroket wrote: post #55
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same issue of "honesty" with afforestation-based credits. A ton of carbon removed during the growth of a new tree is not equivalent to a ton of carbon already removed today. However, as these types of projects actually do remove carbon, one could probably compute an adjustment factor and purchase additional credits to achieve an "honest" offset.

That's assuming the afforestation is even helpful and not one of the various examples of incentives for planting trees leading to work that's actually doing more harm than good.

That's an interesting comment. I hadn't really ever considered that afforestation might be a bad thing - always just assumed "more trees = good". In what sort of examples would it be a bad thing? Trying to create forests in places that naturally weren't forests in the past?

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#58

Post by AnthonyMouse »

quixoticelixer- wrote: post #42
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with carbon offsets is worse than that. First, there is no real way to tell if someone was going to do something anyway. You have an existing operation which is already cost effective to modernize because the fuel savings exceed the cost, so you were going to do it anyway, but now you get to sell credits even though the modernization would have happened regardless. So you have a significant amount of pree…

> First, there is no real way to tell if someone was going to do something anyway. There sort of is though, and both carbon off-setters and this study claim that they can Also there is plenty of demand in this market, even dodgy credits are worth much more than $2

> There sort of is though, and both carbon off-setters and this study claim that they can

What they're talking about is determining if you've paid someone to not burn down a forest and then they do it even after taking the money. Which you could conceivably verify.

The problem is when someone already intends not to burn down a forest, or do whichever other thing counts for credits. Then they can sell credits in exchange for proceeding with their existing intentions. Everyone already intending to do any of those things can profit from selling the credits, so they do and the market contains tons of credits that are not actually making any difference.

> Also there is plenty of demand in this market, even dodgy credits are worth much more than $2

https://carboncredits.com/carbon-prices-today/

Offset are worth less than $2. "Credits" in the EU are worth significantly more, because they use "cap and trade", which results in significant carbon pricing but is manifestly unjust because it directly rewards companies for having been the largest polluters.

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#59

Post by AnthonyMouse »

papercrane wrote: post #47
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right way to do a carbon tax is to refund 100% of the money to the population. Everyone gets a check every month for the entire amount collected, divided by the number of citizens. This way it costs you nothing unless you emit more carbon than the average person, and you can even come out ahead if you emit less. On top of that, it ends up being a net transfer from corporations to individuals, because corporations…

This is essentially the Canadian model. The federal government mandates that every province must put a minimum price on carbon. If they don't the federal program puts a direct price on carbon and rebates the residents of the province directly. About 90% of the money goes directly to residents and the other 10% is directed by the federal government to programs within the affected province, for example in Ontario they…

All the money goes to the refund or every part that doesn't is a regressive tax and an opportunity for corruption.

It's also not clear what local deference is buying you here, because this is one of the very few cases of a national issue where the right solution is clear and simple and makes sense to implement uniformly at the national level.

The only sense of doing it at a local level is if the national government fails to act.

Re: Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact

#60

Post by ecshafer »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #32
Explore3003 wrote: post #6

The money going towards carbon offsets would be better spent on lobbying in favor of carbon taxes, and establishing Enhanced Weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering

I would be happy to support a carbon tax, as long as the proceeds are held off-books and distributed annually to all citizens equally, with no income or other qualification criteria. Basically a carbon funded pure UBI.

So the guy working in a kitchen that makes $20k a year and bikes to work should be taxed the same as the ceo with a private jet when it comes to carbon production?
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