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I'm not convinced by offsetting. It's better to not cause the emissions in the first place, rather than pay someone else to reduce their emissions in exchange l
by rjmunro 7y ago
I'm not convinced by offsetting. It's better to not cause the emissions in the first place, rather than pay someone else to reduce their emissions in exchange later. You can't know that they won't have reduced their emissions anyway.
Certainly taking the train to a conference is better than flying, if that's the choice you have. Concentrating on conferences local to you is a good idea. Attending remotely sort of works, but it's really not the same as being there. It's better if you are with other people at your end, watching together.
- acdha 7y agoOffsetting is good because it starts the process of getting people to think of it as a cost until we get a true carbon tax. You don't need to ban plans, just getting people to save money by taking the train is a net win over what we've been doing for decades.
- icebraining 7y agoYou could offset by paying to actually take carbon from the atmosphere, rather than just not producing more. Climeworks can do it for $600/ton, and will probably drop quite a bit. If they get to $100/ton, flying Lisbon → Brussels would still be cheaper than taking a train.