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Investigation: 78% of carbon offset projects globally are “likely junk“

• blueflow 3y ago
  This article hides behind "Analysts" as if basic thermodynamics was some kind of arcane magic. I'm pretty sure most of us had it in school, conservation of energy, entropy, endothermic reactions, anyone?
• tokai 3y ago
  I would have guessed higher than 78%.
  • jona-f 3y ago
    It is much higher. From the guardian article, the "analysis" this link discusses: "39 ... were categorised as likely junk", "Eight others (16%) look problematic", "the remaining three projects (6%) could not be determined definitively". The original article was submitted here too, but didnt get any upvotes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbo...
• greenthrow 3y ago
  Don't disagree with the hypothesis but this is a low quality article and source.
  • john-radio 3y ago
    The article is just a thin wrapper of blogspam around an investigation by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbo... which I think is high quality.
• DevKoala 3y ago
  Not really since they qualify for ESG points which drive the stock of the company by getting investments from ESG funds. The ponzi works.
• _b 3y ago
  I once worked somewhere where I found some evidence that the offsets we were considering buying were probably junk. The CEO agreed, bought them anyway, and proudly proclaimed to all staff how we were now a net-zero company. Junk offsets are cheaper.
  • GenerocUsername 3y ago
    Feels like modern form of absolving sins. All you need is charismatic preacher to bop you on theforhead and say you are saved.
    • VyseofArcadia 3y ago
      As soon as a coin the the coffer rings carbon dioxide from the air springs!
    • Spivak 3y ago
      It's not a terrible idea as a way of funding work to scrub atmospheric carbon for companies who don't want to or can't do it themselves. I just wish we were more strict about only including sellers that remove (not reduce) carbon from the atmosphere in a directly measurable way.
      • IKantRead 3y ago
        > scrub atmospheric carbon I've seen this phrasing frequently in regards to carbon sequestration and it always seems to wildly understate the real problem with removing CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 isn't some unnecessary byproduct of creating energy, compared to say soot in wood burning. The CO2 created is an essential part of the carbon cycle by which all living things store and release solar energy. CO2 + H2O + (Solar) Energy => Hydrocarbons + O2. This is how energy is stored on our planet from the energy in a high calorie soda to petroleum (okay technically sugar is not a hydrocarbon, but the idea still holds). When we extract energy from foods, burning organic material, or fossil fuels we do so by reversing that equation: Hydrocarbons + 02 => CO2 + H2O + Energy To "scrub" carbon necessarily requires more energy than we got out of the process in the first place. Photosynthesis, for example, is only 4% efficient. Which means it takes about 25x as much solar energy to build the log you burn then the heat and light you experience burning the log. "Scrubbing" CO2 fundamentally requires tremendous amounts of energy, and more than we got from the energy source in the first place. There are natural processes, like rock weathering, than can do this without energy inputs, but those are hard to replicate and scale.
• SantalBlush 3y ago
  Let's get a baseline for comparison. For example, how many climate tech startups, or tech startups in general, are "likely junk"? That would give us some helpful context.
  • dvdkon 3y ago
    Junk startups don't cause much harm to the outside world. In contrast, selling junk carbon offsets is basically fraud, you're selling an environmental impact that just isn't there.
    • mdgrech23 3y ago
      You should read up on the IPCC. They sugar coat reports to make us feel better.
    • SantalBlush 3y ago
      Giving junk a pass under normal circumstances may be what is causing much of this greenwashing. It speaks to the overall culture of startups. If this 78% figure is consistent with the figures of tech startups in general, that would suggest a connection. And that's only one reason why I'd like a baseline; there are many more. Throwing out a single percentage without comparisons for context is just plain bad statistics. It is not meant to inform, merely to persuade.
• akho 3y ago
  Are the other 22 % certain junk? The effects fundamentally do not seem offsetable. The offset industry is based on an idea that you can remove greenhouse impacts from your process without a significant impact on prices, and a corporation is somehow better positioned to donate to a fund than a consumer is. That's bullshit.
  • Aunche 3y ago
    The most verifiable type of offset that I've heard about is landfill methane capture. You can measure the amount of methane captured, and that is what you've offset.
    • londons_explore 3y ago
      But then what happens to the methane? Typically it's burned to make CO2. CO2 lasts longer in the atmosphere than methane.
      • Jarwain 3y ago
        Methane has roughly 25x the warming power as CO2, but burning 1kg of methane only produces a bit over 2kg of CO2
      • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
        Burning methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere is a good thing. Better yet to actually use it for something that will offset fossil fuel use though. I think they burn the various CFCs and HFCS they extract from old refrigeration units for similar reasons.
      • IKantRead 3y ago
        The methane will eventually break down in to CO2 on it's own, so whether your burn it or not you'll get that CO2. However before it breaks down methane is a wildly more potent greenhouse gas. It still takes decades to break down, during which time it's going to be multiple magnitudes more impactful that the CO2 it will eventually become either way.
• moffkalast 3y ago
  John Oliver had a piece on that [0] over a year ago. Companies want the most CO2 offset per dollar to present themselves as neutral as per their greenwashing campaign, so naturally they buy those from the lowest bidder. And those are the ones least likely to be legit, so it's mostly only scams that get the business lmao. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0
• mikelward 3y ago
  Are there any that aren't junk? Wren got a lot of promotion by YouTubers recently. Maybe they were paid to say nice things? Doesn't prove it's junk though? Where would you invest if you wanted to help?
  • staplers 3y ago
    Lawyers and organizations that have proven track record of fighting timber, oil, and mass polluters in court.
  • autoexec 3y ago
    lifestyle changes, better business practices, and clean energy.
  • beefield 3y ago
    Closest to non-junk that I know might be buying allowances out from EU emissions trading system. And even that I am not quite sure.
  • boztalay 3y ago
    I looked into Wren and others a little while ago and raised my eyebrows when I saw that all that was needed to completely offset my impact on the environment was a tiny sliver of my income! I don’t recall the exact number but it was under $60/mo. That’s it? For my travel, growing and shipping and refrigerating all of my food, digging up and purifying all the special metals in my devices and appliances, throwing all my waste in a landfill? It just doesn’t add up. If net zero were that cheap and easy, it wouldn’t be a problem. It seems like they’re selling a way to feel good about yourself without a real lifestyle change. Having said that, though, I do get the impression that the proceeds are put to good use.
    • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      Net zero will probably save you money, not cost you money. But giving you that small amount, or even charging you a small amount doesn't solve the problem, even after you scale it up to billions doing it. Because those billions are currently going to a relatively small number of people who really don't want those billions to stop coming to them and have the concentrated power to stop the vast democratic majority from getting their way. And one of their techniques, alongside pretending the problem doesn't exist, or blaming other people, is to claim it would be expensive to fix. Imagine a monopolist arguing, oh it would be really expensive to fix this market failure! and you have the rough idea. It's a "collective action" problem, not one of missing tech or unwillingness to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
• luxuryballs 3y ago
  They just turn everything into a new way to make money. I’m not even mad, it’s kind of impressive at this point, and they keep getting away with it! What’s next? Pay-per-use single occupant gender neutral restrooms?
  • freitzkriesler2 3y ago
    Don't laugh but a lot of public toilets in Europe are precisely this.
    • autoexec 3y ago
      I'm honestly surprised Europe puts up with it. I imagine if they tried it here, people would just let loose on the floor if they were out of change. It seems like some do even while they're free. Maybe public urination is less of a big deal in Europe and people are fine with doorways or bushes if they're unable to pay the pee fee.
      • bmoxb 3y ago
        > I imagine if they tried it here, people would just let loose on the floor if they were out of change. They do here (Europe) too.
      • freitzkriesler2 3y ago
        I know in a lot of cities they have public latrines so popping a number 1 is easier. Number 2 is harder. And yeah, if I had to drop a 2 and didn't have any change, I would probably do it right in front of the pay toilet to prove a point.
  • phpisthebest 3y ago
    The restroom debate is always odd to me, I would 100% pay to use "single occupant gender neutral restroom" Public Restrooms are terrible, I would prefer to be alone when I am using them. I am not sure why people fight so hard to preserve something so bad....
  • hotpotamus 3y ago
• willcipriano 3y ago
  If you pay someone to stop burning tires, his competitor will just have more tires to burn.
• moralestapia 3y ago
  Three years ago I entered this business as I saw some opportunity. After about a year I got out because everything there was fraud. F R A U D. >most of them exaggerate climate benefits and underestimate the potential harm [...] >projects were categorised as “likely junk or worthless” due to one or more “fundamental failing” that undermines its alleged emissions offsetting power [...] Stop trying to disguise these operations as something else than fraud. These people made no "mistakes", this not a "sorry, we didn't know better" situation, they DID know. It is plain old pre-meditated fraud, the owners knew they were selling crap from the start, they lied about it, still lie about it and they get to profit off that. Edit: Funny, some invisible hand just moved my post from being the top comment for the past hour and getting lots of upvotes every minute, to the very bottom. I must be onto something here :).
  • RobinL 3y ago
    Did you find any schemes where you were satisfied they were genuine? I'd love to know where I could donate money where I could be confident it genuinely had an impact
    • moralestapia 3y ago
      There were a few carbon capture (CC) projects that were genuine, shoutout to the guys at AirMiners, they also have a great community and they're a pretty smart bunch of people. Downside of CC is it's still too expensive and current methods capture carbon on the order of kilograms/month where gigatons/month is needed. Sure, the tech will improve with time, and there's economies of scale, etc..., but a 10,000,000,000-fold change? Doubt it. Also, there's some fundamental physical limits that you'll hit way before you get close to that throughput. I wouldn't think of them as fraud though, as the people involved (usually) do not lie about what the current state of tech is. I'd say whatever shows reduction on carbon emissions is a legit thing; far from ideal, but the best thing we have atm.
      • dskloet 3y ago
        > Downside of CC is it's still too expensive Some googling suggests that it's $200 per metric ton, is that right? That would put the cost of capturing the world's entire footprint at $7T per year. That's a lot of money but seems pretty close to worth doing. Especially given that once we decide to do it, it will get cheaper quickly.
• phpisthebest 3y ago
  Carbon cap and trade, Carbon Offsets, and any other scheme to "cap and market" pollution is not about saving the environment, it is protectionist program of wealth redistribution nothing more. These programs are about control, and wealth redistribution lets stop pretending otherwise
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    Worked for Sulphur Dioxide.
  • mullingitover 3y ago
    > These programs are about control, and wealth redistribution lets stop pretending otherwise Shrug, if it's all BS but it does something to the mind-bogglingly skewed wealth distribution[1] we can still chalk it up as a win. [1] https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?si=90mDv90g1mq6-a0T https://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM?si=90mDv90g1mq6-a0T
    • phpisthebest 3y ago
      If you want to advocate wealth distribution fine, do it openly and honestly, not under the guise of a "climate crisis" Of course most people understand wealth distribution is generally bad, and leads to terrible outcomes and rarely actually fairly and equitably distributes any wealth that is why it is almost universally rejected by the masses when tried. wealth distribution is normally simply a method to impose authoritarian governance on a population while claiming to be a social good, so more or less wealth distribution is the same scam as Carbon Offsets.
      • mullingitover 3y ago
        > Of course most people understand wealth distribution is generally bad Evidence to the contrary is the US progressive taxation policy, which is universally popular. In the absence of sane wealth redistribution mechanisms, wealth inevitably accumulates and stays at the top, at which point the vast power concentrated in a tiny group of hands hollows out democracy.
• unlikelymordant 3y ago
  This is in the voluntary carbon markets, quite separate to regulated carbon markets. It is unfortunate that so many may be junk, but in the end 380 billion T of carbon needs to be removed from the atmosphere between 2050 and 2100 to keep earth at 1.5 degree warming, assuming we hit current net zero pledges. This just means more regulation is needed for trust, not that carbon markets themselves should be ditched.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• auggierose 3y ago
  Just the idea that you can buy something to be net-zero is junk. No further research needed.
• xyst 3y ago
  We will do anything but decrease our dependency on oil and gas (automobiles, energy generation, …), meat production/consumption, regulate O&G producers, and make our cities more efficient (migrate away from car centric transportation in the USA).
• narrator 3y ago
  The Permian Basin in Texas, which has provided most of the oil supply growth for the last decade, is starting to slowly decline from its peak. Let's say that climate change is a nice way to tell people that we're running out of oil. Why would you want to do that? You'd want to say that energy demand is the problem, not energy supply. Thus, we need to get people to cut back on their usage and come together in a global rules based order to implement that. Telling the world we are running out of oil will encourage hyper-nationalism and cause the oil exporters to prematurely starve the rest of the world in an every nation for itself war of all against all. What would be the tells that oil supply depletion is what's really going on? Electrification of transport would be a high priority. Carbon credits would be likely BS and half-hearted and nobody would check. China would build 6x more coal plants than the rest of the world combined[1] and encourage reduction in coal usage in other countries to provide a more ample supply[2]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/china-urges-europe-take-positive-steps-climate-change-2022-09-22/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/china-urges-eur...
  • Telemakhos 3y ago
    I've thought along these lines too. Any time the possibility of scarcity it publicized, panic buying makes the problem far worse than it needs to be, as in the looming rice shortage or the recent toilet paper shortages. Oil is the lifeblood of industrial civilization, needed for everything from energy to raw materials; panic in the oil markets would threaten industrial civilization.
  • breezeTrowel 3y ago
    Not sure I follow this narrative regarding China building a ton of coal plants being a signal for oil shortage. Can you elaborate? There aren't any power plants that run on oil there and the whole thing seems like a move away from hydroelectric power which has been severely weakened due to drought.
    • narrator 3y ago
• nixass 3y ago
  Any "sustainability", "green", "offset", "community", etc banners or ads are pure bullshit and should be taken as
• lasermike026 3y ago
  The only way to deal with atmo-devastation stop extracting and burning coal, oil and methane. We must switch to nuclear, wind, solar and water.
• econperplexed 3y ago
  There are three parties in such contracts. Look at their incentives. * The company who wants a certificate saying they offset their carbon usage - the certificate being useful for publicity, and possibly tax breaks/subsidies. They care just about the certificate, not about offsetting carbon. * The tree planting (or whatever way they are offsetting) company. They just want to claim they planted the tree. Nobody else is really checking to see if they planted the trees, if these trees were only planted for one offset contract, and five years later if the trees hit maturity. * The company handing out the certificates. They match a claim from a tree-planting company with a certificate buying company. They don't really care that the carbon was offset. In fact, the larger their record of past projects, the bigger clients they can score in the future. So they have every incentive not to look too closely at the tree planter. Just to print out a certificate with minimal oversight. In such a market, is the TFA result surprising.
• yakshaving_jgt 3y ago
  S06E06 of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! debunked carbon credits. That was 15 years ago. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1272784/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1272784/
  • Dylan16807 3y ago
    Carbon credits can work in a system where you don't just let people make them with weak verification. The problem isn't the underlying concept.
    • Supply5411 3y ago
      The problem is inseparable from the system, because people are involved.
      • LorenPechtel 3y ago
        It could be done. Show me the carbon you sequestered and how the containment will work.
      • therealdrag0 3y ago
        I guess I don’t follow. Most problems involve humans and yet we solve problem after problem.
    • yyyk 3y ago
      A system where everyone have the incentive to cheat in the same direction isn't going to work in practice.
• GrumpyNl 3y ago
  That page inserts a lot of pages to hijack the back button.
• munk-a 3y ago
  It is my firm belief that anyone who wants to solve climate change through "carbon sequestration" either doesn't actually understand the technological requirements involved or is just trying to kick the can down the road. We need to reduce - that is the solution.
  • the-smug-one 3y ago
    What're you going to do about all of the dead dinosaurs in the air that used to be in the ground?
    • undersuit 3y ago
      They didn't say don't use carbon sequestration. They said don't expect it to be the solution.
  • yodon 3y ago
    Reducing only slows the process. It can theoretically buy time to solve the climate problems but it doesn't solve them on its own.
    • natch 3y ago
      It’s not going to be solved. We will adapt with new body plans. Nature is on its own, but will bounce back with lots of extinction and adapted species.
  • prewett 3y ago
    It's worse. We've been pumping out CO2 on an industrial scale for two centuries and using the energy that gave. So now we've got to put back that energy on the industrial scale. Needless to say, we do not have an industrial level of excess energy.
    • qball 3y ago
      >we do not have an industrial level of excess energy If only there was some turnkey design we could build that produces utterly massive amounts of energy with a few grams of fuel that can also be continually recycled based on physical principles understood for over a century. Fortunately for environmentalists, no such solution exists. Could you imagine how much of a socioeconomic disaster it would be if we printed a trillion dollars to build hundreds of gigawatts of excess generating capacity to just run carbon capture directly (and desalinization once we're done with that)? Besides, we would never print a trillion dollars to save 0.01 quality-adjusted-life-years across the world population. The bill for that is just too high.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  In other news, world oil consumption is at record highs at 101.5 million barrels of oil per day. Thats 2 liters (large coke bottle) of oil per person in the world per day, and when burned turns into 3000 liters of CO2 (about the volume of a large couch). If everyone produced a couch-size piece of any other kind of junk each day, within a week the streets would be jammed with couches. But because it's invisible gas, life goes on as if we're not making a huge mess.
  • cm2012 3y ago
    Emissions are dropping like a rock though in the US and EU.
    • londons_explore 3y ago
      Maybe so, but worldwide they're still going up. If the whole world wants a quality of life equal to the US, emissions will go up a lot. A US person uses 13 MWh of electricity per year, while the world average is 3 MWh. The difference is even bigger when comparing other energy sources.
    • hollandheese 3y ago
      More like emissions are being moved to other countries so the US and EU can claim their emissions are dropping like a rock. When a US company moves production out of the US to China, suddenly the emissions become China's problem.
      • cm2012 3y ago
        This has been looked into and it's not a substantial part of the drop.
• kderbyma 3y ago
  when I first heard of these....I was blown away....an entirely fictional asset class and it was going to save the world.... hahahahahaha
• LBTables 3y ago
  Why tf did that website resirect-nuke my browser back ability?
  • gumballindie 3y ago
    I flagged it because it does hijack the back button.
• lucidguppy 3y ago
  We need to reduce draw down of our limited fossil fuel assets. Once their gone - they're gone. If we hit peak oil right now - we are absolutely fucked. I have a feeling like we're hitting it right now - given that car prices and housing prices are getting out of reach.
• arbuge 3y ago
  Brought this to mind: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/10/1054428108/burning-wood-pellets-isnt-the-clean-energy-it-claims-to-be-critics-say https://www.npr.org/2021/11/10/1054428108/burning-wood-pelle...
• dsign 3y ago
  Complicated solutions are, well, complicated. How do you know that doing x results in less net emissions? Action x is, very likely, part of a graph that starts at one point on the globe and spreads all over. Is it possible to honestly tally emission effects? What about the "side effect" of economic growth? If company Y produces vehicles that emit CO2, and CO2-emitting vehicles are taxed, company Y will transition to electric vehicles which, for the sake of exposition, let's really believe don't produce CO2. But now company Y can contribute to economic growth, for example by selling trucks that can transport more goods at no "environmental cost", other than the environmental cost of the goods themselves (e.g., imagine the trucks are transporting coal, meat, or people), the cost of making and maintaining the roads, etc. Generally, if GDP grows a factor of z in a certain time-period and CO2 emissions are reduced by a factor of w per unit of GDP in the same period, then as long as z / w > 1, CO2 emissions increase. In my opinion, the best solution for Earth is to reduce GDP units while also trying to reduce CO2 emissions per GDP units. The best solution for people is to keep economic growth unchecked. Since the two things are incompatible, Earth and people should part ways.
• unholiness 3y ago
  Incentives are just completely misaligned. There are more ways to pretend you're helping than to actual help, these ways are cheaper, and nothing incentivizes punishment. The buyers of the snake oil are just as happy as the sellers. But even if the abuse, the double-counting, and the fraud were all fixed, voluntary offsets would still look silly. Buying a carbon offset in a market of whoever feels like participating is about as good as buying the NFT for Manhattan. Offsets are only a finite resource in a virtual sense. We can't take their price seriously as a moral indulgence.
• Darmody 3y ago
  A bit off topic. What kind of garbage is this site? There's no way to go back. It pollutes the whole history. I can go back up to the last 15 visited sites and all of them are this site.
• okokwhatever 3y ago
  Who could imagine!! My Lord, what a surprise!
• autokad 3y ago
  Its the modern day equivalent of 'Indulgences'
  • black6 3y ago
    It's the modern day global religion, so indulgences is an apt name.
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  (carbon offsets trade like cryptocurrencies if you haven't checked it out)
• nickdothutton 3y ago
  Most carbon offset schemes are at best naive and I suspect many, perhaps most are more or less fraud.
• Nickersf 3y ago
  For example: "Let's do wind turbines to generate clean electricity!" The wind turbine manufacturing and decommissioning processes are hugely inefficient, not to mention the negative impacts wind turbines have during their operational period. Regardless of these findings large areas of land in North America and Europe are littered with wind turbines. Oh while we're at it lets shut down all the nuclear power plants because we're scared of them. "Hey, this whole green energy thing has been a total disaster. Regardless, let's start setting arbitrary deadlines on which we want to eliminate gas powered cars and replace them with electric cars that rely on our disastrous green energy rollout!" The push to widespread electric car usage is ignoring major infrastructure short comings in many places where the push is happening. It's almost like the people in charge of this stuff are a bunch of idealistic nitwits who are risking plunging us into the dark ages.
• efxhoy 3y ago
  Article hijacked my back button and gave no examples of what the projects were doing or why they were junk.
• 1270018080 3y ago
  22% is a lot higher than I would've guessed (.1%)
• Fervicus 3y ago
  This is how you get people skeptical of anything climate related in general
• manicennui 3y ago
  The entire idea of "carbon offset" is junk.
• nawgz 3y ago
  The idea that 22% of them are NOT junk is honestly surprising to me. I would've expected a number north of 90% to come out of even a cursory investigation.
• elil17 3y ago
  People who actually want to make a climate impact with their money are supporting policy change and technology research. One estimate puts the price of averting a ton of CO2 through the Clean Air Task Force's policy advocacy programs at $0.10 to $1 [1]. They've played a huge role in shaping things like the US's latest infrastructure bill. However, donating to them means admitting that preventing climate change is messy, political, and uncertain - not great for greenwashing your company. 1: https://www.catf.us/timeline/rated-top-climate-charity/ https://www.catf.us/timeline/rated-top-climate-charity/
• darepublic 3y ago
  Related: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FPhyY5VZo0E&pp=ygULdGh1bmRlcmZvb3Q%3D#bottom-sheet https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FPhyY5VZo0E&pp=ygULdGh1bmRlcmZ...
• WalterBright 3y ago
  Not surprised in the least. The simple, effective, and efficient way to deal with CO2 emissions is to tax the carbon content of fuels. The other schemes are all nonsense, and it baffles me why otherwise intelligent and educated people think they can determine the "carbon footprint" of a business.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • mdgrech23 3y ago
    I mean you could if you rationed access to fossil fuels. Obviously the framework to do that isn't in place today in the US but it probably will be at some point as reserves thin out over time and just letting the market handle it is going to result in chaos when it's no longer profitable for private ambulance companies to fill their tank or local police department can't afford it.
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      Rationing is never the answer. It always results in shortages, hoarding, and mis-allocation.
      • fragmede 3y ago
        What's your solution then, say fresh water after a hurricane? The grocery store has enough to go around if everyone takes only 1 container. Charging 100x the normal price to soft limit purchases seems way worse than a sign that says "limit one per customer".
        • WalterBright 3y ago
          > say fresh water after a hurricane? We know what happens. Filthy capitalist swine outside the blast area immediately load their pickups full of water, gasoline, food, and other supplies. They rush them to where the need is highest and sell them to the highest bidder. As more of these running dogs pour in, the supply increases and the prices come down. The goods pass to those most in need (i.e. willing to pay). There is no hoarding, as the prices are declining. With rationing, nobody rushes in with supplies, because that would be illegal. (Of course there will be smugglers, but the prices will be much higher than that charged by the swine, as the legal risk carries with it a price premium.) The local supply will quickly run out. Since need varies from person to person, the ones who don't need it will hoard it to sell later at black market prices. The ones who do need it will face shortages as everyone else is hoarding it and the local supply ran out. That's how rationing works in the real world.
• Hoasi 3y ago
  Colour me surprised. How are carbon offset credits different from Catholic Church's indulgences?
• nonethewiser 3y ago
  Im surprised its not higher. “Junk” carbon offset programs fulfill their purpose all the same.
• rewgs 3y ago
  Honestly I’m surprised it’s as low as 78%.
• xg15 3y ago
  I want to eat this cake, but I'm already overweight. But no problem, the baker tells me. As it happens, he was planning to put out another cake with the same amount of calories tomorrow, which I'd surely eat too. But if I pay him a dollar, he'll hold off doing that and hand me a fancy certificate documenting his intention. I can then take the negative calories that spring from my act of not-eating the hypothetical future cake and use them to offset the positive calories of the actual cake right in front of me - and in the end, the cake will have net zero calories and I can finally eat in piece. Yum!
• godshatter 3y ago
  I like the idea of carbon offsets and carbon trading (i.e. give a market incentive to take CO2 out of the air), but this obviously isn't working. Stricter controls might help, but it would become a cat and mouse game. Part of me, jokingly (mostly), thinks we should replace it with a "carbon buy-back" program where people and/or the government can donate money to buy carbon from people and bury it deep or sink it in the ocean or something. Go clear cut all that land, sell it to the program, then replant. That's the only way I can see a market solution really working. Corporations donate to the fund to ease their corporate consciences and the carbon gets dumped down an old mine shaft and buried in concrete. Of course, it likely wouldn't work for a lot of reasons, but it would at least be more on point. "Don't just promise to sequester carbon, bring it to us to dispose of" would at least help take the gaming out of that particular system.
  • xg15 3y ago
    Seems to me this would be susceptible to the cobra effect: > where people and/or the government can donate money to buy carbon from people... No matter what you do with the carbon afterwards, this scheme means you first have to buy it and the other party can sell it. I think being able to sell carbon would create exactly the opposite incentive from what is needed - suddenly it becomes profitable to produce carbon and a profit risk to reduce emissions.
    • godshatter 3y ago
      Which works in the case of planting more trees, but fails if someone brings in a barrel of oil. As I said, lots of problems with it.
• rthomas6 3y ago
  Why not just tax carbon emissions?
  • t0bia_s 3y ago
    How taxes should ever work for reducing problems?
• badtension 3y ago
  I just wonder how do "mishaps" like this square with techno-optimists looking at graphs going up and convincing us "everything is on track for an amazing future!" [1]. I don't know if this is just my cynicism but I just can't believe we are going to fix the climate. Every now and then something like this sees the light of day and it seems like we are just doing some clever feel-good bookkeeping rather than fixing the core of the issue. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3VVrggKz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl3VVrggKz4
• 3seashells 3y ago
  So are companies burying co2 rich garbage paid as well? Does a garbage dump for paper and lime get to issue tokens?
• numitus 3y ago
  Another 22% are "definetly junk"