Of course, it’s better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I’d like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible.
I am definitely willing to pay to offset my carbon usage, but I’m under the impression that this is mostly a scam. Does anyone use these services? If so, can you tell me what reasoning or sources you used that satisfied you that the service your chose isn’t a scam?
I pay for refrigeration destruction, but that’s about it. It’s strongly verifiable, additional, and as permanent as can be. It’s through wren, which seems to be the most strict about credit quality since they removed all the other projects like cooking stoves and tree planting a while back leaving only refrigeration destruction and biochar, which also seems like a quality credit albeit many times more expensive than refrigeration destruction.
That said I don’t treat carbon credits as offsets, just an additional charity that I do on top of doing my best to be sustainable, reducing, reusing / repairing, and responsibly disposing of things. At the end of the day you can only do so much individually so the only way to do more is to put some of your extra money somewhere that might do a little extra good.
Yup we do. There’s a couple of certification schemes that are decent, but you get what you pay for in offsets. Most aren’t really offset, just planting a tree that’ll disappear in 10 years.
Geological storage of air extracted carbon is the only standard I’d fully trust to genuinely act as an offset. Bloody expensive though.
I used to be a big believer in cooking stoves, but there’s research that shows it becomes an additional stove, not a replacement to open fire cooking. So that ain’t really working then.
Does being a plant mom count? My house is like a greenhouse it has so many plants in it. I am the plant equivalent of cheaper by the dozen.
It sequesters the carbon while it’s alive, but you’d need to bury the plant deep underground to remove it from the equation
Why would I have to bury it?
When plants break down they release CO2. It needs to never decompose to remove carbon dioxide.
How come the same doesn’t apply to animals and oxygen?
https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/17/2020/06/carbon-cycle-1024x1024.jpg
The issue is that we have artificially accelerated the return of carbon to the cycle by burning coal and oil.
Why? To ease your conscience by claiming that it is not as bad because you paid something extra? It’s the modern version of the selling of indulgences.
It’s worse than doing nothing because it gives the people the illusion that it’s not so bad - while in fact it is exactly as bad.
I am not against easing one’s conscience, so long as that’s not the only thing people do. It’s a perverse turn in our culture that we’ve started to shame people for trying to act morally. We have a conscience for a reason: to motivate good behaviour. This reminds me of the right’s claim that everything is “virtue signalling”, as if moral action itself is undesirable. It coheres with a hyper individualistic and self-interested worldview.
My question is precisely whether “in fact it is exactly as bad”. That is an empirical claim, not one that you can declare with a serene wave of the hand. That John Oliver reporting is useful in that regards, whereas your comment, devoid of argument or evidence, is not.
Im going to piggy back off this - does anyone know of any reputable carbon capture schemes?
It seems like removing carbon directly should be completely measurable and auditable so we can be sure it’s actually having an impact?
In answer to the post - offsets are a scam, even the well intentioned ones often have side effects and the market is set up such that the bad ones get all the money.
I don’t think so. There even was an operating one in Saskatchewan Canada, but all it did was send the CO2 through a pipe across the US border for more oil extraction.
So… worse than doing nothing. 👌
Its not currently operating because even that was too expensive to justify.
Individual action cannot be a solution for the climate crisis. The whole idea of individual responsibility for climate impact is the divide and conquer strategy of big business as ultimate form of the collective action problem.
Global actions are the sum of individual actions. Just because one can not safe the world alone, one still should behave like one could.
Carbon offsets are propaganda at best, but actually intended for large Greehouse Gas emitters to use accounting tricks to ensure they don’t have to change anything about their business, and show they are complying with the toothless regulations those same industries lobbied the EPA to ratify.
By even participating in the scam you are perpetuating more climate destruction. If you want to “offset” your carbon footprint, go bomb a pipeline. The amount of disruption you cause will probably offset your entire life’s carbon output.
