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Carbon offsets are sadly hopeless. Let's plant more trees, look the carbon is now tied in nice biomass. Few short decades later: Oops, an entirely predictable f
by angelzen 5y ago
Carbon offsets are sadly hopeless. Let's plant more trees, look the carbon is now tied in nice biomass. Few short decades later: Oops, an entirely predictable fire just released all that carbon back into the atmosphere.
That assuming the tree planting is done correctly, and does not lead to unhealthy fire prone over density, in the chase for an extra buck. Like every financialized enterprise in the history of the world. No, the tree planting people are good people and would never do something like that.
At best these programs are forest preservation programs. That is they attempt to keep the carbon in the forest instead of blowing the forest up for short term economic gain. That is good, we need more of it. But it is disingenous to call them 'carbon capture' and the end result 'carbon negative'.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/27/wildfires-rage-carbon-credits-500830 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/27/wildfires-rage-carb...
https://carbonplan.org/research/forest-offsets https://carbonplan.org/research/forest-offsets
For fun, check the effect of the Oregon 2020 Lionhead fire on one of these projects. The fire absolutely dwarfed the carbon offset project, and killed half the trees therein.
https://carbonplan.org/research/offset-project-fire https://carbonplan.org/research/offset-project-fire
- AdamSC1 5y agoSeems you didn't read the article, as they expressly aren't planting trees nor is the offsetting what makes them carbon negative. The offsetting is one thing but they are also funding credits to startups that physically remove carbon from the air and sequestering it in these carbon capture programs.
- angelzen 5y agoCool!