Study: Carbon offsets aren’t doing their job, overstate impact • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by transcriptase » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:01 AM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #78

transcriptase wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in the modern world has the oil/energy needed to create it baked into the price. Implementing a carbon tax that increases that cost along every step of a supply chain increases the price of everything, not just gasoline. See: Price of groceries (and all other CPG) in Canada. People will blame the retailers and lazy headlines about record profits, but if you look at their actual margins, the value of CAD, a…

Yes, and thus it’s highly motivating for every link of the supply chain to figure out how to exploit low- or no-carbon energy sources.

Which might work in other countries with a different climate, geography, and population density but until electric tractor trailers or teleportation become a reality it’s just increasing the cost of living for everyone who already can’t afford to “invest in green solutions”.

Unfortunately our current government doesn’t realize that they’re not comparable to California.

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

#102

Post by opportune » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:05 AM UTC

No mention of ESGs? Want to know why corporations participate in this idiotic charade, as well as other weirdly ubiquitous theatrics? It’s because paying lip service to this kind of stuff is a requirement for certain funds to be able to hold their stock: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_c...

So corporations have a big financial incentive to do the bare minimum to satisfy ESG requirements, and carbon offsets are an unregulated sham. No surprise, the market finds a way and delivers impossibly cheap “offsets” so that such environmental stewards as Chevron, and soon Phillips Morris, can be considered to be environmentally friendly and socially benevolent enough to be included in ESG funds.

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

#103

Post by tito » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:10 AM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #100

tito wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the industry [0]. The decarbonization game is extremely tricky. This whole notion of "were they going to do it anyway", how the heck do you build that in. And how the heck does demand happen, who wants to pay for invisible, mostly useless gas? The key question at the root of this is this: do we need to win the decarbonization game? Or can we just set down the game and walk away? To me it looks like we need…

GP was speaking about the problems with carbon offsets today. You're talking about the need to decarbonize without acknowledging or addressing the points that GP made. Most are not stupid enough to say that we should set down "the game" of decarbonization and walk away. Many intelligent people are saying that carbon credits don't seem to be working to date as part of "the game". Rather than point out the obvious of h…

In your analogy, yes, I'm the person that sees nutrition as exercise as the only levers, and so then my alternative solution is "well we need to get it right then". Open to other ideas for levers too.

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

#104

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:11 AM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #100

tito wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the industry [0]. The decarbonization game is extremely tricky. This whole notion of "were they going to do it anyway", how the heck do you build that in. And how the heck does demand happen, who wants to pay for invisible, mostly useless gas? The key question at the root of this is this: do we need to win the decarbonization game? Or can we just set down the game and walk away? To me it looks like we need…

GP was speaking about the problems with carbon offsets today. You're talking about the need to decarbonize without acknowledging or addressing the points that GP made. Most are not stupid enough to say that we should set down "the game" of decarbonization and walk away. Many intelligent people are saying that carbon credits don't seem to be working to date as part of "the game". Rather than point out the obvious of h…

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by PakG1 » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:12 AM UTC

tito wrote: post #103

PakG1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP was speaking about the problems with carbon offsets today. You're talking about the need to decarbonize without acknowledging or addressing the points that GP made. Most are not stupid enough to say that we should set down "the game" of decarbonization and walk away. Many intelligent people are saying that carbon credits don't seem to be working to date as part of "the game". Rather than point out the obvious of h…

In your analogy, yes, I'm the person that sees nutrition as exercise as the only levers, and so then my alternative solution is "well we need to get it right then". Open to other ideas for levers too.

You have completely missed my point and I am not sure how to get you to see it. My point is that you did not respond to what someone has said, you ignored it and went on your own tangent. And you did it again.

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

#106

Post by tito » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:13 AM UTC

opportune wrote: post #102

No mention of ESGs? Want to know why corporations participate in this idiotic charade, as well as other weirdly ubiquitous theatrics? It’s because paying lip service to this kind of stuff is a requirement for certain funds to be able to hold their stock: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social,_and_c... So corporations have a big financial incentive to do the bare minimum to satisfy ESG requirements, an…

In line with this, another comment someone said "perhaps they're doing exactly their job but their job is not actually what it purports to be."

It's possible they're doing exactly their job but that it's not a job we need done. The job we need done is rapid decarbonization. So how do we do that?

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

#107

Post by tito » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:16 AM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #105

tito wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your analogy, yes, I'm the person that sees nutrition as exercise as the only levers, and so then my alternative solution is "well we need to get it right then". Open to other ideas for levers too.

You have completely missed my point and I am not sure how to get you to see it. My point is that you did not respond to what someone has said, you ignored it and went on your own tangent. And you did it again.

Got it, I missed your point and still haven't got it. I appreciate that you took the time to respond.

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

#108

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:27 AM UTC

tito wrote: post #99

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not "if", but "how". Sure, but "how" could be to abandon the concept of credits whatsoever and institute a carbon tax.

First off, yes, agree, fixed problem, open on solution, "how" could be anything, including doing a funny dance that inspires every person on the planet to just stop emitting so much. Hmm, say more about this. I said this to another commenter, I'm pretty sure all a carbon tax does is solve for the "demand" side of the equation. Fundamentally you would still need an accounting system for carbon, thus carbon credits of…

With a carbon tax there is nothing to exchange with other people. If you buy gasoline or coal, you pay a tax and the money is evenly distributed to everyone. People who have existing coal-fired power plants don't get free credits to allow them to sustain their operations, they just pay the tax and then become uncompetitive with non-carbon generation methods. So they go out of business as fast as alternative generation methods can be constructed. In the meantime ordinary people have the refund to compensate for the temporarily higher price of electricity.

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

#109

Post by tito » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:39 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108

tito wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, yes, agree, fixed problem, open on solution, "how" could be anything, including doing a funny dance that inspires every person on the planet to just stop emitting so much. Hmm, say more about this. I said this to another commenter, I'm pretty sure all a carbon tax does is solve for the "demand" side of the equation. Fundamentally you would still need an accounting system for carbon, thus carbon credits of…

With a carbon tax there is nothing to exchange with other people. If you buy gasoline or coal, you pay a tax and the money is evenly distributed to everyone. People who have existing coal-fired power plants don't get free credits to allow them to sustain their operations, they just pay the tax and then become uncompetitive with non-carbon generation methods. So they go out of business as fast as alternative generatio…

Oh I get it. You tax emissions with no way to lower the tax besides lowering emissions. That means there's an underlying accounting for carbon, but like you said there's not something like market or exchange. So in this model air travel for example would 2x in price, but 1x of that would go towards the carbon tax which is then redistributed to everyone. Sounds interesting, are there any particular strengths or weaknesses to this model?

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

#110

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Aug 28, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

tito wrote: post #109

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a carbon tax there is nothing to exchange with other people. If you buy gasoline or coal, you pay a tax and the money is evenly distributed to everyone. People who have existing coal-fired power plants don't get free credits to allow them to sustain their operations, they just pay the tax and then become uncompetitive with non-carbon generation methods. So they go out of business as fast as alternative generatio…

Oh I get it. You tax emissions with no way to lower the tax besides lowering emissions. That means there's an underlying accounting for carbon, but like you said there's not something like market or exchange. So in this model air travel for example would 2x in price, but 1x of that would go towards the carbon tax which is then redistributed to everyone. Sounds interesting, are there any particular strengths or weakne…

The strengths are that it's simple, hard to game, and doesn't harm ordinary people because the average person gets a refund of 100% of the money. (It's also somewhat progressive because people with more money tend to emit more carbon and so pay more tax, but only get the same refund.)

The main "weakness" is that it imposes significant costs on existing fossil fuel operations. Oil and coal companies would lose billions of dollars in value because they would both have to pay the tax and experience a surge in new competition from alternatives that can now underprice them. I don't regard this as a problem -- the writing has been on the wall for a long time now and if you've invested in these industries you could have predicted this was coming -- but it is an inconvenience because it causes those industries to lobby against it aggressively, which makes it harder to enact. (But the same will be true of anything with near-term effectiveness, because the whole point is to put them out of business.)