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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

#221

Post by Tiktaalik »

SamBam wrote: post #168

If you had $5000 that you wanted to use to fight climate change, and you wanted to have it have a bigger multiplying effect than your own personal consumption (install heat pumps, get electric car, etc.), where would you put that, given that most carbon credits seem to be scams? That is, what's the least-scammy carbon credit, and/or place of concrete change? Places I donate to, but wonder how much the effect of each…

In the realm of political donations, municipal politics is so often forgotten about, but is in control of some of the lowest hanging fruit for carbon reduction in cities.

Almost the entirety of carbon emissions in cities comes from 1) home heating and 2) transportation, both of which could be significantly impacted by city policy from environmentalist municipal politicians.

For example:

* separated bike lanes (incredibly cheap in the grand scheme of things)

* pedestrianization of public spaces

* legalizing relatively denser apartment buildings everywhere.

* public transit improvements

All work to take CO2 emitting cars off the road

Political movement toward bans on gas for home heating (already occurring in many places) a further way to reduce CO2 emissions.

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

#222

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cogman10 wrote: post #192
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 billion…

The other weakness is you can game it with international trade. Produce a good in a country without the carbon tax, repackage it in a country that doesn't keep good origin manifests, lie about doing that, then send it to your destination on a solar powered boat (or whatever has the lowest carbon footprint). We see the same game being played with slavery and child labor. Pick a favorite brand, add "slavery" and you'll…

This is not really specific to a carbon tax though, is it? If the EU is using a cap and trade system or what have you, it still happens, because it's a problem of evaluating what is going on in someone else's jurisdiction.

My suggestion in another thread is to impose general tariffs on countries that don't have their own carbon tax, which, if it successfully pressures them to adopt one, avoids these kinds of games because now the high-emitting country charges the carbon tax itself regardless of whether its exports make a pitstop in Greenland, which it may do even if some of its exports were avoiding the tariff that way, so that all of them can avoid it.

But it's not obvious this is even necessary because if the largest economies (especially the US) did this, it would shift the economies of scale in favor of non-carbon energy sources to such an extent that they would become cost competitive on their own nearly everywhere else in the world anyway.

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

#223

Post by worik »

pkphilip wrote: post #185
SamBam wrote: post #168

If you had $5000 that you wanted to use to fight climate change, and you wanted to have it have a bigger multiplying effect than your own personal consumption (install heat pumps, get electric car, etc.), where would you put that, given that most carbon credits seem to be scams? That is, what's the least-scammy carbon credit, and/or place of concrete change? Places I donate to, but wonder how much the effect of each…

Buy some land in a cheap rural place and fill it with fruit trees and contribute that towards the community each year. That will sequester far more carbon and help the environment more than contributing funds towards these sorts of programmes - and you will likely build up some immovable assets over time.

Building up top soil is better than trees.

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

#224

Post by AnthonyMouse »

asu_thomas wrote: post #220
lmm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. A stable climate is a ridiculously hopeless pipe dream in a world dominated by the capitalist mode of production. The anti climate change industry is a fraud by definition. Ok so what are you claiming here? That preventing climate change is impossible so we should give up and pollute as much as we like without worrying about it? Because if your position is that we can't prevent climate change without overthrowin…

Capitalism has only been the dominant mode of production for approximately 2 centuries, and people made all the same excuses for feudalism yet here we are.

Capitalism has only been the dominant mode of production for approximately 2 centuries but feudalism lasted for ~6, so what if you want to do something about climate change sooner than ~400 years from now?

It's also not obvious what you propose to replace it with, because the world has seen communist governments and they do not have a sterling environmental record.

"Up to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times as much pollution per unit of GNP as the United States." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia)

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

#225

Post by palata »

jplusequalt wrote: post #215
palata wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, it is important to realize that it's not a choice, really. Fossil energy is not unlimited. Either we start preparing for that, or it will happen and we will be unprepared (which will be worse). > There's just no way I can see how people would have anywhere near today's quality of life without the corresponding energy consumption. I think that there is a lot we can do without changing the quality of life. First…

I understand where you are coming from, but this will never happen in the US. This is tantamount to political suicide here. We will all sooner die, or there will be war and revolution before the US gives up its individualism.

That's what I think as well. No way countries like the US (and others, obviously) can make that kind of changes. Unfortunately we're all on the same boat, we will all sink together.

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

#226

Post by cogman10 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #222
cogman10 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other weakness is you can game it with international trade. Produce a good in a country without the carbon tax, repackage it in a country that doesn't keep good origin manifests, lie about doing that, then send it to your destination on a solar powered boat (or whatever has the lowest carbon footprint). We see the same game being played with slavery and child labor. Pick a favorite brand, add "slavery" and you'll…

This is not really specific to a carbon tax though, is it? If the EU is using a cap and trade system or what have you, it still happens, because it's a problem of evaluating what is going on in someone else's jurisdiction. My suggestion in another thread is to impose general tariffs on countries that don't have their own carbon tax, which, if it successfully pressures them to adopt one, avoids these kinds of games be…

Fair point. There likely needs to be somewhat of a critical mass before it becomes super effective. This might be something that could be accomplished with an international treaty.

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

#228

Post by pkphilip »

dusanh wrote: post #193
pkphilip wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy some land in a cheap rural place and fill it with fruit trees and contribute that towards the community each year. That will sequester far more carbon and help the environment more than contributing funds towards these sorts of programmes - and you will likely build up some immovable assets over time.

Or buy some land and leave it alone, let nature do it's thing. Sadly this is not possible as in most places there is legislation in place that prevents you from "mismanaging" land like this.

I think it is more fun and fulfilling to attempt to do something with the land - to make it useful towards the local community, than leaving it to nature to just fill the land. For instance, if you make a small pond, you could suddenly have a very interesting ecosystem in this land

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

#229

Post by neuronerdgirl »

TexanFeller wrote: post #198
SamBam wrote: post #168

If you had $5000 that you wanted to use to fight climate change, and you wanted to have it have a bigger multiplying effect than your own personal consumption (install heat pumps, get electric car, etc.), where would you put that, given that most carbon credits seem to be scams? That is, what's the least-scammy carbon credit, and/or place of concrete change? Places I donate to, but wonder how much the effect of each…

Start buying reusable and BIFL goods and avoid everything disposable. It's expensive, but worth it for more than the planet. We need to have a lot more focus on the reduce and reuse components of the solution. Most of what we Americans buy is cheap disposable nonsense that shouldn't exist.

Carrying this forward, stop buying shit. Humans today consume an ungodly amount of unnecessary crap. Just in terms of clothing the fast fashion industry has absolutely demolished our sense of longevity and repairability and convinced us we need entire new goddamn wardrobes every other year.

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

#230

Post by badtension »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #224
asu_thomas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism has only been the dominant mode of production for approximately 2 centuries, and people made all the same excuses for feudalism yet here we are.

Capitalism has only been the dominant mode of production for approximately 2 centuries but feudalism lasted for ~6, so what if you want to do something about climate change sooner than ~400 years from now? It's also not obvious what you propose to replace it with, because the world has seen communist governments and they do not have a sterling environmental record. " Up to its collapse in 1991, the Soviet Union gener…

It is always the same argument: things are not perfect, ok, but what we replace it with? Noone know, so we keep the thing going.

I think this is what the parent commenter had in mind - we are just incapable of solving this problem, doesn't matter how we put it. Our climate will be gone and as a skeptic I would only ask: will we manage a slow degrowth or have a rapid system collapse?

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