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These kind of opinions are increasing in frequency and they all seem poorly reasoned to me. Yes, there are standards organizations to make sure that, for instan

These kind of opinions are increasing in frequency and they all seem poorly reasoned to me. Yes, there are standards organizations to make sure that, for instance, tree farms aren't just logging their trees and selling the same plots for offsets again. The author makes the point that the timeframes are too long, but that just strikes me as thinking similar to "planting trees doesn't work, we need x instead!" When the point is that every little bit helps. Given good enough standards, it just means that while carbon offset opportunities are plentiful, they'll be cheap - and as they become more popular, the price will increase, and this is a good thing. I also really dislike the "corporations are trying to avoid responsibility by passing it on to the people!" argument, because it just seems a lazy argument designed to remove any personal agency. Corporations are made out of people. If people didn't exist, neither would the corporations. If demand for a corporations products or services dried up, the corporation would cease to exist. As corporations reduce their emissions, the per-person carbon footprint shrinks. In the US, the per-person carbon footprint is lower than it used to be. They're related. Communicating a per-person carbon footprint increases people demanding corporations reduce emissions. If the per-person carbon footprint were a scheme developed by corporations to avoid accountability, it seems a very poorly-thought-out and ineffective scheme from those corporations.

hgsgm 4y ago
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> I also really dislike the "corporations are trying to avoid responsibility by passing it on to the people!" Oh come on... People like Leo Dicaprio and Taylor Swift fly on their private jets to tell Johnny Average here, that he should bike for 15 miles to his workplace. Organizations are the same... look at coca cola for example, some water, sugar and aromas, in a plastic bottle, plastic cap, plastic sticker, packed in a sixpack wrapped in plastic, on a pallet, wrapped in more plastic. Reusable glass bottles? Nope (atleast not in my country). Just look at packaging of most items.. clamshell packaging, toothpaste double or tripple wrapped, shrinkflation (less product, same amount of packaging, more packages bought), single peppers wrapped in plastic, bananas wrapped in plastic, electronics literally designed to be unrepairable, tractors going that way too, cars following, user replacable batteries are usually too expensive to replace on 2 year old devices, sotware updates slow down devices, big corps requiring computer-bound workers to come to office, instead of working from home, clothes companies replacing cotton clothes with synthetics, leaking microplastics everywhere, companies catchign fish in US seas, or even meat, shipping them to china to be cleaned, cut and packaged, and then shipped back to US, zero regulation on 3rd world, where corpos either mine raw materials or "recycle" stuff (and recycling copper means burning the insulation off first... literally burning heaps of plastic),... and lets not forget the "accidents" when companies like BP ignore safety and cause fucking huge oil spills and destroy huge areas with their carelessness, and they don't even get properly punished for that. But no... let's pass the blame on people, who have no alternative on the market, and let's ban straws, because "that'll surely help the environment".
- Jiro 4y ago
  Clamshell packaging is used to prevent theft.
  - salawat 4y ago
    Heaven forbid. We can't have a nice planet to live on because somebody's metrics aren't what they want.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  Like I said, I don't understand the logic. Rich corporations/people aren't doing everything I think they should do, so therefore I shouldn't track my carbon footprint? People like Leo/Taylor fly on their private jets, therefore Johnny shouldn't bike to work? Banning straws is useless (?) so therefore, companies aren't doing anything worthwhile at all in cutting emissions? Man... if we wait for everything else to be perfect before we put in any effort, that's a pretty great recipe for failure. All those clauses you listed, the proper therefore is "therefore they should not do that". That's it. And if they stop doing it, or do it less, the per-person carbon footprint goes down. It doesn't have anything to do with shifting blame.
  - rdm_blackhole 4y ago
    The concept of carbon footprint for the average person is in itself a scam to let corporations off the hook by blaming the average person and focusing the conversation on what Johnny average does or eats in a day while forgetting that Big Oil has done everything in its power within the last 50 years to avoid responsibility regarding the fact that they knew and lied about the potential effects of climate change.
    - tunesmith 4y ago
      That just strikes me as a reiteration of what I'm already talking about.
wonnage 4y ago
> In the US, the per-person carbon footprint is lower than it used to be. They're related. Communicating a per-person carbon footprint increases people demanding corporations reduce emissions. How much of that is simply a result of moving dirty manufacturing industries into other countries?
- nl 4y ago
  I have wondered that too. I haven't found CO2 specific measures, but I did find this: > And what he found was that the decline in pollution wasn't driven by offshoring. US factories were genuinely finding ways to cut emissions. In fact, the industries that saw the biggest drops in pollution intensity actually grew as a share of output. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/7999417/US-factory-pollution-offshoring https://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/7999417/US-factory-pollution-of... But another paper (although this is from 2008) did find: > Our results indicate that international trade is a significant factor in explaining the change in emissions in many countries, from both a production and consumption perspective. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1006388108 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1006388108
- jahewson 4y ago
  This is a well-studied subject and the answer is - not as much as you’d expect, and actively declining since 2005. https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
tomrod 4y ago
What entity is responsible when a corporation chooses to externalize their known costs?
- tunesmith 4y ago
  I'm all for mandating tracking of externalities in companies' finances. Do it through taxing carbon emissions or however it can be done. It just doesn't mean that carbon offsets are "greenwashing".
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> If people didn't exist, neither would the corporations. If demand for a corporations products or services dried up, the corporation would cease to exist If people didn't exist, neither would professional killers. If demand for taking out political opponenta and personal enemied dried up, professional killers would sease to exist.

hgsgm 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

> I also really dislike the "corporations are trying to avoid responsibility by passing it on to the people!" Oh come on... People like Leo Dicaprio and Taylor Swift fly on their private jets to tell Johnny Average here, that he should bike for 15 miles to his workplace. Organizations are the same... look at coca cola for example, some water, sugar and aromas, in a plastic bottle, plastic cap, plastic sticker, packed in a sixpack wrapped in plastic, on a pallet, wrapped in more plastic. Reusable glass bottles? Nope (atleast not in my country). Just look at packaging of most items.. clamshell packaging, toothpaste double or tripple wrapped, shrinkflation (less product, same amount of packaging, more packages bought), single peppers wrapped in plastic, bananas wrapped in plastic, electronics literally designed to be unrepairable, tractors going that way too, cars following, user replacable batteries are usually too expensive to replace on 2 year old devices, sotware updates slow down devices, big corps requiring computer-bound workers to come to office, instead of working from home, clothes companies replacing cotton clothes with synthetics, leaking microplastics everywhere, companies catchign fish in US seas, or even meat, shipping them to china to be cleaned, cut and packaged, and then shipped back to US, zero regulation on 3rd world, where corpos either mine raw materials or "recycle" stuff (and recycling copper means burning the insulation off first... literally burning heaps of plastic),... and lets not forget the "accidents" when companies like BP ignore safety and cause fucking huge oil spills and destroy huge areas with their carelessness, and they don't even get properly punished for that. But no... let's pass the blame on people, who have no alternative on the market, and let's ban straws, because "that'll surely help the environment".

Jiro 4y ago
Clamshell packaging is used to prevent theft.
- salawat 4y ago
  Heaven forbid. We can't have a nice planet to live on because somebody's metrics aren't what they want.
tunesmith 4y ago
Like I said, I don't understand the logic. Rich corporations/people aren't doing everything I think they should do, so therefore I shouldn't track my carbon footprint? People like Leo/Taylor fly on their private jets, therefore Johnny shouldn't bike to work? Banning straws is useless (?) so therefore, companies aren't doing anything worthwhile at all in cutting emissions? Man... if we wait for everything else to be perfect before we put in any effort, that's a pretty great recipe for failure. All those clauses you listed, the proper therefore is "therefore they should not do that". That's it. And if they stop doing it, or do it less, the per-person carbon footprint goes down. It doesn't have anything to do with shifting blame.
- rdm_blackhole 4y ago
  The concept of carbon footprint for the average person is in itself a scam to let corporations off the hook by blaming the average person and focusing the conversation on what Johnny average does or eats in a day while forgetting that Big Oil has done everything in its power within the last 50 years to avoid responsibility regarding the fact that they knew and lied about the potential effects of climate change.
  - tunesmith 4y ago
    That just strikes me as a reiteration of what I'm already talking about.

wonnage 4y ago

> In the US, the per-person carbon footprint is lower than it used to be. They're related. Communicating a per-person carbon footprint increases people demanding corporations reduce emissions. How much of that is simply a result of moving dirty manufacturing industries into other countries?

nl 4y ago
I have wondered that too. I haven't found CO2 specific measures, but I did find this: > And what he found was that the decline in pollution wasn't driven by offshoring. US factories were genuinely finding ways to cut emissions. In fact, the industries that saw the biggest drops in pollution intensity actually grew as a share of output. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/7999417/US-factory-pollution-offshoring https://www.vox.com/2015/2/8/7999417/US-factory-pollution-of... But another paper (although this is from 2008) did find: > Our results indicate that international trade is a significant factor in explaining the change in emissions in many countries, from both a production and consumption perspective. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1006388108 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1006388108
jahewson 4y ago
This is a well-studied subject and the answer is - not as much as you’d expect, and actively declining since 2005. https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

tomrod 4y ago

What entity is responsible when a corporation chooses to externalize their known costs?

tunesmith 4y ago
I'm all for mandating tracking of externalities in companies' finances. Do it through taxing carbon emissions or however it can be done. It just doesn't mean that carbon offsets are "greenwashing".

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> If people didn't exist, neither would the corporations. If demand for a corporations products or services dried up, the corporation would cease to exist If people didn't exist, neither would professional killers. If demand for taking out political opponenta and personal enemied dried up, professional killers would sease to exist.