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I don’t think anyone thinks that offsets are the complete solution. Eventually we will have low carbon flight tech. A lot of money is being invested in developi

I don’t think anyone thinks that offsets are the complete solution. Eventually we will have low carbon flight tech. A lot of money is being invested in developing this but it takes time to transition. Your argument seems to be based on the idea that because it doesn’t totally solve the problem then it is a scam. But if it contributes to the solution and buys time then what is the problem? It is all about buying time. Tech is rapidly advancing. For instance, I was just in Dubai. Wow, that is an unsustainable city. Except that they are plowing wealth into solar. It is 13% solar powered today (plenty of sun in those parts) and will be 100% by 2050. That’s great. But the world needs time to transition. And if we can buy time by creating revenue streams for saving rainforest lands and mangrove forests and the like, that’s a win win. But it still isn’t enough without the tech. And yes, sure, it would be great if no one drove cars or flew. But short of economic collapse, we need time to transition. What am i missing?

belorn 5y ago
The energy grid is a prime example of why carbon offset do not work, and in some cases, actually create perverse incentives. For the last decade or so the major strategy has been carbon neutral energy grid by using the logic that if the total exports of green energy surpasses the consumption of fossil fuel energy then the net sum is positive. The assumption is that the export will displace fossil fuel energy. The result is that under this plan fossil fuel plants can continue to operate since its more profitable to export green energy than shutting down fossil fuel plants, and since nations need large capacity in transitions lines to do exports they can also increase imports. More and longer life time of existing fossil fuel plants, and increased consumption of imported fossil fuel generated energy, while politicians can claim that the grid is green. The strategy share much of the articles criticisms of carbon offset. The assumption that the exported energy will create avoided emissions is taken as a fact rather than a theory, with poor evaluation of the quality. If Everyone Did It, the strategy wouldn't work. Everyone can't just export massive amount of green energy while continuing burning more fossil fuels. Someone somewhere need to actually stop burning fossil fuel for emissions to go down. And like the article noticed, the market forces do not align to encourage people to stop emitting carbon.
snewman 5y ago
I agree that the concept of "buying time" has merit. One good way to apply that would be a cap-and-trade system, with a gradually shrinking cap. Trading offsets within a cap-and-trade system avoids the criticisms I'm making. But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in: 1. It is often presented as a a complete solution, rather than a helpful interim step. A company announces plans to offset their emissions, and then declares victory. But it is only a half victory; between the offset seller and the offset purchaser, only half of the total emissions have been addressed. 2. It removes the incentive to start developing solutions for the more difficult categories of emissions. It will take time to decarbonize, say, steel manufacturing. But we need to start developing pilot projects today. If the steel manufacturers can say "we're addressing climate change, we've purchased offsets", then no one is paying for those pilot projects. I shared some more thoughts about this in an older post: https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050 https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050.
- chii 5y ago
  > no one is paying for those pilot projects. i would assume offsets have to be purchased continuously - that is, you cannot purchase an offset once and be done with it forever. I also assume that there's limited offsets that could be purchased, and it's not growing unless money is put into making more offsets possible (e.g., enlarging a rain forest, not merely protecting it). This means every year, there would be more competition to purchase offsets from all participants, raising the price of offset. Eventually, the price would be high enough that it's more profitable just save emissions yourself - e.g, those pilot projects. But if you predict this, you would start doing those pilot projects sooner, and beat your competition! So why isn't this true today? The assumptions i made must be wrong - so which assumption is wrong?
FrenchAmerican 5y ago
You're missing... time. Like us all. The required transition requires time. But the kind of transition you mention is by far too slow to stop climate dereliction and loss of biodiversity. In 2025, the amount of greenhouses emitted will get the world in the following years to +1.5ºC (when compared to 1750, before the industrialization). We are already experiencing the effects of the climate dereliction, despite being around +1.25ºC (I'd need to chech that figure). Australia's current unknown floods will be followed by a summer of fires and temperature above 50ºC. The drought in the USA is alarming etc etc. To avoid reaching +2ºC, the world would need the multiply the current transition trend by a factor... 33. Above +2ºC, the climate will enter into self-reinforcing effects. The Amazon forest is on the verge of becoming an savanna: such a very large forest produce its own rain. By mid-april 2022, a larger surface of Amazon forest has been burnt than during 2021, the previous highest record. The Covid and Putin's revolting invasion of Ukraine is masking a fundamental trend: the agricultural yields are already falling almost everywhere because of climate dereliction (about 20% less the recent years). That is the true reason for the huge inflation of food prices. We just don't have the time for that kind of slow transition in the hope that some wonderful technical breakthrough will save us all. I'm not the one saying that: just read the 111 page of the sum-up of the IPCC reports just published. Thousands of scientists have participated. Their climate model is now well tuned. The previous reports proved to be already reliable, and even by far too optimistic. If you believe in Science, then you can't stay in the delusion that we are doing anything near what is necessary to tackle the issue. Believing that Science and Technology will somehow provide the breakthroughs soon enough to stay under +2ºC is at best a convenient wishful thinking, but more likely magical thinking. Why? Because the whole subject has been worked on by thousands of scientists in the past 40 years. One can not believe in Science only when it fits one's way of life. "The future is already here, but not evenly distributed": The solutions exist. It has been shown that their costs to the world economic growth is far cheaper than the current quasi-inaction. If we invest massively, we are quite capable of handling it. We don't need any breakthroughs. I'm optimistic that some will occur if we focus. But the whole thing is classic game theory situation: everybody wins if everybody cooperates, but each country will be better off doing nothing while the others pay the cost of transition. So we do nothing. At least nothing near the acceleration by a factor 33. Don't trust me. Read the IPCC 111 pages and make your own opinion. Sorry for the gloomy post. I can't help myself believing in Science.
kqr 5y ago
A lot of organisations claim they are carbon neutral when they offset their estimated emissions. So, yeah, people think it's the complete solution, at least locally.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  This is why the banker-led accounting is important. So that credits are credited appropriately. Sequestering 1 ton at the cost of half a ton should be accounted as half. As I’m sure it will be as the market rationalizes.

belorn 5y ago

The energy grid is a prime example of why carbon offset do not work, and in some cases, actually create perverse incentives. For the last decade or so the major strategy has been carbon neutral energy grid by using the logic that if the total exports of green energy surpasses the consumption of fossil fuel energy then the net sum is positive. The assumption is that the export will displace fossil fuel energy. The result is that under this plan fossil fuel plants can continue to operate since its more profitable to export green energy than shutting down fossil fuel plants, and since nations need large capacity in transitions lines to do exports they can also increase imports. More and longer life time of existing fossil fuel plants, and increased consumption of imported fossil fuel generated energy, while politicians can claim that the grid is green. The strategy share much of the articles criticisms of carbon offset. The assumption that the exported energy will create avoided emissions is taken as a fact rather than a theory, with poor evaluation of the quality. If Everyone Did It, the strategy wouldn't work. Everyone can't just export massive amount of green energy while continuing burning more fossil fuels. Someone somewhere need to actually stop burning fossil fuel for emissions to go down. And like the article noticed, the market forces do not align to encourage people to stop emitting carbon.

snewman 5y ago

I agree that the concept of "buying time" has merit. One good way to apply that would be a cap-and-trade system, with a gradually shrinking cap. Trading offsets within a cap-and-trade system avoids the criticisms I'm making. But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in: 1. It is often presented as a a complete solution, rather than a helpful interim step. A company announces plans to offset their emissions, and then declares victory. But it is only a half victory; between the offset seller and the offset purchaser, only half of the total emissions have been addressed. 2. It removes the incentive to start developing solutions for the more difficult categories of emissions. It will take time to decarbonize, say, steel manufacturing. But we need to start developing pilot projects today. If the steel manufacturers can say "we're addressing climate change, we've purchased offsets", then no one is paying for those pilot projects. I shared some more thoughts about this in an older post: https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050 https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050.

chii 5y ago
> no one is paying for those pilot projects. i would assume offsets have to be purchased continuously - that is, you cannot purchase an offset once and be done with it forever. I also assume that there's limited offsets that could be purchased, and it's not growing unless money is put into making more offsets possible (e.g., enlarging a rain forest, not merely protecting it). This means every year, there would be more competition to purchase offsets from all participants, raising the price of offset. Eventually, the price would be high enough that it's more profitable just save emissions yourself - e.g, those pilot projects. But if you predict this, you would start doing those pilot projects sooner, and beat your competition! So why isn't this true today? The assumptions i made must be wrong - so which assumption is wrong?

FrenchAmerican 5y ago

You're missing... time. Like us all. The required transition requires time. But the kind of transition you mention is by far too slow to stop climate dereliction and loss of biodiversity. In 2025, the amount of greenhouses emitted will get the world in the following years to +1.5ºC (when compared to 1750, before the industrialization). We are already experiencing the effects of the climate dereliction, despite being around +1.25ºC (I'd need to chech that figure). Australia's current unknown floods will be followed by a summer of fires and temperature above 50ºC. The drought in the USA is alarming etc etc. To avoid reaching +2ºC, the world would need the multiply the current transition trend by a factor... 33. Above +2ºC, the climate will enter into self-reinforcing effects. The Amazon forest is on the verge of becoming an savanna: such a very large forest produce its own rain. By mid-april 2022, a larger surface of Amazon forest has been burnt than during 2021, the previous highest record. The Covid and Putin's revolting invasion of Ukraine is masking a fundamental trend: the agricultural yields are already falling almost everywhere because of climate dereliction (about 20% less the recent years). That is the true reason for the huge inflation of food prices. We just don't have the time for that kind of slow transition in the hope that some wonderful technical breakthrough will save us all. I'm not the one saying that: just read the 111 page of the sum-up of the IPCC reports just published. Thousands of scientists have participated. Their climate model is now well tuned. The previous reports proved to be already reliable, and even by far too optimistic. If you believe in Science, then you can't stay in the delusion that we are doing anything near what is necessary to tackle the issue. Believing that Science and Technology will somehow provide the breakthroughs soon enough to stay under +2ºC is at best a convenient wishful thinking, but more likely magical thinking. Why? Because the whole subject has been worked on by thousands of scientists in the past 40 years. One can not believe in Science only when it fits one's way of life. "The future is already here, but not evenly distributed": The solutions exist. It has been shown that their costs to the world economic growth is far cheaper than the current quasi-inaction. If we invest massively, we are quite capable of handling it. We don't need any breakthroughs. I'm optimistic that some will occur if we focus. But the whole thing is classic game theory situation: everybody wins if everybody cooperates, but each country will be better off doing nothing while the others pay the cost of transition. So we do nothing. At least nothing near the acceleration by a factor 33. Don't trust me. Read the IPCC 111 pages and make your own opinion. Sorry for the gloomy post. I can't help myself believing in Science.

kqr 5y ago

A lot of organisations claim they are carbon neutral when they offset their estimated emissions. So, yeah, people think it's the complete solution, at least locally.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
This is why the banker-led accounting is important. So that credits are credited appropriately. Sequestering 1 ton at the cost of half a ton should be accounted as half. As I’m sure it will be as the market rationalizes.