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Shell sold 'phantom' carbon credits
- gulced 2y agohttps://archive.is/aeLO7 https://archive.is/aeLO7
- doublerabbit 2y agoAll "credits" are phantom. Credits are an illusion of one that makes it look like $company are doing something. But in reality the company is still polluting the environment. Credits don't make the toxic plumes from manufacturing chimneys go away, nor do companies care. They're more happy to pay the fines and continue than so.
- 486sx33 2y agoWho started carbon credit trading? ENRON !
- immibis 2y agoBest illustrated by the principle: "Ha! I was about to murder that person but then I didn't! Now I have saved one life and accumulated one murder credit, so I am net innocent of the murder I did yesterday."
- moralestapia 2y agoBest variation of that joke is paying somebody to avoid eating meat so you can pretend you're vegan.
- thsksbd 2y agoI always considered doing that but in reverse, if my daughters ever come to me pretending to become vegan. Then, Id offer to become vegan in their place (reproductive age women really should eat red meat often). Turns out one of my kids is allergic to everything but meat so the idea that we can chose not to eat meat is pretty foreign to them.
- adrianN 2y agoYou can have enough iron in your diet without meat.
- thsksbd 2y agoEnough iron in your gut, yes. You can swallow rouge from a woman's powder cabinet and get your "daily dose" Bioavailable iron? Much harder. And, since humans are not the same; some of us have guts that really don't absorb vegetable iron well. For dudes, who care if you cant digest iron? But for women? For me this is a fundamental woman's right issue [1]. Lacking iron life sucks. Literally, your vitality plummets and you are groggy and sleepy all day every day. The ability of a woman to enjoy life when she lacks iron is significantly reduced. For me, people who argue for veganism to reproductive age women (or children), are no different than those who argue for female circumcision as both destroy the ability of women to enjoy a rich life. [1] and, admittedly, personal, since I have at least three loved women who have suffered devastating decrease in their quality of life from their inability to digest iron. My wife, I fixed convincing her to drop veganism.
- gklitz 2y ago> They're more happy to pay the fines and continue than so. Yes? Thats the whole point isn’t it? Imagine a race where there’s speed credits. The fastes runners won’t slow down, but they’ll end up distributing part of their winnings to those who run slower, giving them a better chance to stay in the game. Carbon credits aren’t intended to get companies to stop polluting, that would require laws, but they make it more expensive to polite without reason and create a profit potential for greener initiatives. All of that depends on the credits not being phantom credits though. And therein lies a big issue with things like offsets. You can only sell cutting down a tree once, but you can sell not cutting down a tree infinite times, you can even sell not cutting down a tree that doesn’t exist.
- acdha 2y agoThis is kind of the point: we can’t force everything to change overnight but if polluting becomes more expensive people make different decisions over time. The example I usually use are heat pumps: some people balk at the up-front cost but if burning methane required you to buy offsets that’d change the calculation over a decade. The problem is that this would have worked better 30-40 years ago when the fossil fuel industry successfully co-opted “conservative” politicians and now we have far less window for gradual change.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThe positives (profit) are privatised, whilst the negatives (pollution) are socialised (and sometimes/often socialised to a country out of sight and out of mind of the country in which the profits are privatised). Something... Anything that counteracts this unfortunately universal situation has needed enacting for, as you say, 30-40 years at least. And yet I can't see there being any movement towards this for the foreseeable future.
- P_I_Staker 2y agoI'm deadset against the concept of paying money to fix the environment. Claiming to be carbon neutral vs. the reality of wrecking planet, doing nothing to help, while paying to absolve yourself of responsibility seems like a celebration of modern hubris. Apple seems like a perfect example. For the last 5-10 years, it's been clear that they are wasting tons of resources selling adapters. They also happen to be a company with tons of cash on hand. So it should be no shock that they think the idea of paying to win the morality game is great. However, has anybody noticed this is total nonsense!?!? You're still releasing carbon, assholes. Gutter punk throws a empty beer can at a tech bro, understandably annoyed, the tech bro yells "have you any idea the damage to the environment". This coming from a guy that eats fast food 8 times a week, has a trash cup every morning with coffee, and throws out half their clothes and housewares every year. Gutter punk responds "I will always be better for the environment, since I use less; I can piss wherever I want, and throw my trash anywhere, it won't make a dent compared to your waste." Tech bro responds "... but I have more money than you; surely I am more moral. Can't I just pay $2k to put the genie back in the bottle?"
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoMy climate consciensce was really expensive, so it must be a good one. Designed in Cupertino*! says so on the sticker on the shrink wrap. Unreadable text denoted by the asterisk: Manufactured in Bangladesh
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoReferenced Greenpeace report: Shell’s flagship carbon capture project sold $200M of ‘phantom’ emissions credits: Greenpeace report https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40277066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40277066