[HN Gopher] Study: Carbon offsets aren't doing their job, overst...
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Study: Carbon offsets aren't doing their job, overstate impact
Author : donutshop
Score : 97 points
Date : 2023-08-27 17:26 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| yawboakye wrote:
| both carbon offset and the business surrounding it (especially
| carbon sequestration) are mostly for the purpose of virtue
| signaling. it's no different from the sunday confessions held
| mostly in catholic cathedrals, where one can sin all they want
| during the week and have it all forgiven in a couple minutes talk
| with a priest. if you can keep current operations as is, reap
| massive profits, and pay pennies towards carbon removal, which
| dumb business executive will refuse?
| paulcole wrote:
| Carbon offsets never made sense from the start. Obviously just a
| way to continue polluting, maintain a clean image, and line
| somebody's pockets.
| ihsw wrote:
| [dead]
| Explore3003 wrote:
| The money going towards carbon offsets would be better spent on
| lobbying in favor of carbon taxes, and establishing Enhanced
| Weathering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| > lobbying in favor of carbon taxes
|
| This is deeply unpopular with the electorate, and for very good
| reason.
|
| When the only "solution" to "fighting" global warming is to
| levy more taxes on the middle class, increase food and
| construction costs, and cripple developing nations' ability to
| build industry -- when elites fly around the world on private
| jets (that spew more CO2 in 6 hours than I will create in 10
| years), and "researchers" rake in grant money based on
| promoting apocalyptic levels of fear -- well... put it like
| this: If you want right-wing populist governments, that's how
| you're going to get them.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| My more colorful language is beating poor people and the
| middle class with a rubber hose and hope that solves the
| problem while ignoring the large frictions present in those
| people lives.
|
| You want poor people to switch to an electric car? Do what
| California is doing with car buybacks and grants for new and
| used EV's. A low income person in some counties can get a
| couple of grand to trade in his old gas car for a used EV's
| like a Bolt. That's better because instead of feeling
| attacked people feel like they got a decent deal.
| shipman05 wrote:
| Electric cars are an optimization something we shouldn't be
| doing in the first place.
|
| E-bikes and trains can save the world.
| labster wrote:
| And yet that's still better than carbon credits
| wmf wrote:
| The populists may enjoy sticking it to the rich with a carbon
| tax and dividend.
| finite_depth wrote:
| [dead]
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The right way to do a carbon tax is to refund 100% of the
| money to the population. Everyone gets a check every month
| for the entire amount collected, divided by the number of
| citizens. This way it costs you nothing unless you emit more
| carbon than the average person, and you can even come out
| ahead if you emit less. On top of that, it ends up being a
| net transfer from corporations to individuals, because
| corporations still pay the tax but only individuals get the
| checks.
|
| It would also be a very informative trial run for a UBI
| (though in this case the amount would be smaller).
|
| The "problem" with this is strictly politics: a) It would
| actually work, so the fossil fuel energy companies _hate it_
| ; b) There is no opportunity for graft because the money is
| distributed to everyone and not just the politically
| connected, so there is no special interest lobby trying to
| make it happen.
| papercrane wrote:
| This is essentially the Canadian model. The federal
| government mandates that every province must put a minimum
| price on carbon. If they don't the federal program puts a
| direct price on carbon and rebates the residents of the
| province directly. About 90% of the money goes directly to
| residents and the other 10% is directed by the federal
| government to programs within the affected province, for
| example in Ontario they used the money for energy retrofits
| of public schools.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-
| change/services...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| All the money goes to the refund or every part that
| doesn't is a regressive tax and an opportunity for
| corruption.
|
| It's also not clear what local deference is buying you
| here, because this is one of the _very_ few cases of a
| national issue where the right solution is clear and
| simple and makes sense to implement uniformly at the
| national level.
|
| The only sense of doing it at a local level is if the
| national government fails to act.
| papercrane wrote:
| The deference to local levels here is simply pragmatic.
| Constitutionally the environment is a provincial
| government responsibility. The Federal backstop is only
| legal because of the "peace, order, and good government"
| clause of our constitution.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That actually makes sense in a way. If the local
| government is addressing an issue the national government
| shouldn't need to touch it. In the US it's basically the
| opposite (once the federal government gets involved with
| something the states can't override it), and it's
| basically terrible because there were originally meant to
| be limits on what the federal government can get involved
| in but they've been expanded beyond all reason.
|
| And local control can still "work" even when the same
| solution should apply everywhere because they can each
| individually adopt the same solution, the same as
| different countries can. In theory a province could even
| counteract the effect of the federal government trying to
| get them to spend 10% of the money by just distributing
| it to the population as it should have been, though of
| course politicians rarely have that much willpower.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| Why wouldn't people just use their UBI on buying more
| things, which, as rudimentary understanding of physics
| goes, yields more demand for production, which increases
| C02 output?
|
| Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't understand how
| taxing and redistributing the money does anything besides
| shifts the consumer power a bit???
|
| I mean, wouldn't a better solution just be to have a carbox
| tax and then destroy the taxed money?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're neither creating nor destroying any new money.
|
| Bob is average. Bob pays $100 in carbon tax and then gets
| a check for $100. He doesn't have any more or less money
| to spend than he did before. He is able to continue his
| existing behavior and make no change whatsoever, if he
| wants.
|
| But now he has the _incentive_ to make a change. Because
| if he installs electric heat pumps instead of heating his
| house with oil, now he is only paying $50 in carbon tax
| but still gets a check for $100. If he can get the heat
| pumps installed for a monthly payment of less than $50,
| that 's what he's going to do. And that's the goal.
| 9dev wrote:
| This is a very interesting idea. Actually, it's also the
| only solution I can think of that would incentivise people
| to emit less carbon, using selfishness as a lever to
| achieve cooperation - similar to capitalism itself.
| nine_k wrote:
| This sounds cool.
|
| What would be the cost of administering this tax?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| We already collect federal excise tax on fuel. Changing
| the amount has a trivial cost. We already collect
| withholding tax from individuals. Changing the amount has
| a trivial cost (your boss adds money to your paycheck
| every week instead of removing it if your tax rate is now
| negative, retirees and people on disability/unemployment
| have the amount added to their existing social
| security/benefits check).
|
| There would be a minor one-time cost for the small
| minority people none of that applies to, to fill out a
| form specifying where you want the money to be deposited
| or the check mailed. But the fundamental process of
| distributing the money would be a transfer of a fixed
| amount to each citizen with a social security number,
| which is easily computerized.
| sokoloff wrote:
| This misses embodied carbon in imports and much of the
| emissions from domestic agricultural and industrial
| processes, which are surely large enough to not be
| ignorable.
|
| If you want to only tax fuels, that's a start.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Obviously the administrative cost of taxing some other
| emissions source is going to depend on the nature of that
| emissions source, but if hypothetically evaluating
| emissions from certain sources turned out to be
| prohibitively burdensome, that would not be any excuse to
| avoid doing it for fuels at a minimum, which constitute
| the majority of emissions anyway.
|
| And a more efficient way to handle imports would be to
| impose general tariffs on imports from countries that
| don't _themselves_ impose a carbon tax, rather than
| trying to calculate the effects of something happening in
| a foreign country. Which would have a more significant
| effect anyway, because causing the entire country to
| reduce its own emissions would be a much bigger win than
| causing only their exports to do so.
| wmf wrote:
| The cost would probably be similar to the COVID stimulus.
| Maybe they can require the dividend to be distributed
| using FedNow to drive down the cost somewhat.
| mym1990 wrote:
| You really believe that a within a complex restructuring
| like this, there would not be _any opportunity for graft_?
| Would love to step into whatever fairy tale you 're in.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If 100% of the money is evenly distributed to every
| citizen, there is not a cent left to fund any corruption.
| Ideally the minimal administrative costs should not even
| come out of the carbon tax, of which _fully one hundred
| percent_ should be _evenly distributed to every citizen_.
|
| Presumably there would be some wrangling about how to
| measure CO2 emissions in certain harder to objectively
| measure contexts, but they're still not getting any of
| the money, they might just sneak in a way to not pay
| their full share. And we know with low variance how much
| CO2 is emitted by a unit of motor fuel or natural gas or
| coal, which represent the bulk of emissions.
| [deleted]
| cagenut wrote:
| nobodies raking in grant money, and if you're in ethiopia or
| south sudan or niger then the apocalypse is already here: htt
| ps://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/downloads/figures/IPCC_AR...
| postmodest wrote:
| > "researchers" rake in grant money based on promoting
| apocalyptic levels of fear
|
| This is a bad take. We are currently living in apocalyptic
| levels of REALITY.
|
| The people saying what you just said, but twenty, thirty,
| fifty years ago, were speaking out against the warnings that
| --if we'd acted in them instead of attacking the messenger as
| you did-- could've kept us from global wildfire and heat
| domes.
| veavo wrote:
| [flagged]
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| The world isn't actually going to end.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| No, but I'd prefer not to have to deal with more and more
| extreme weather events, increased sea levels, etc. The
| planet will survive, we as a species probably too, but
| it's going to get shittier for many of us.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The world isn't actually going to end.
|
| The world didn't end after the Black death and it did not
| end after WW2. And it will not end after a nuclear war.
|
| So we should never do anything because the world is never
| going to end.
| panarchy wrote:
| No, but our quality of life sure will (and already has
| for some people)
| WicWacWok wrote:
| I mean better late than never, but somehow I don't see this
| reducing carbon emissions so much as slowing them.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I would be happy to support a carbon tax, as long as the
| proceeds are held off-books and distributed annually to all
| citizens equally, with no income or other qualification
| criteria. Basically a carbon funded pure UBI.
| twoodfin wrote:
| What this kind of proposal needs is a name the progressive
| and moderate left can rally around. Something akin to "living
| wage".
|
| Mandating a "living wage" makes some things noticeably more
| expensive: Burgers, rideshares, lawn care, ...
|
| A serious, effective carbon tax will make gas more expensive.
| Maybe 50 cents/gallon.
|
| If the voting public felt the same way about gas prices as
| they do about the minimum wage--if you can't afford it your
| financial model is immoral--an effective carbon tax would be
| a political slam dunk.
| ecshafer wrote:
| So the guy working in a kitchen that makes $20k a year and
| bikes to work should be taxed the same as the ceo with a
| private jet when it comes to carbon production?
| jfim wrote:
| A carbon tax just puts a price on carbon emissions. So if
| the guy bikes to work and doesn't buy gas, he's not paying
| taxes on carbon emissions, while the CEO in a private jet
| pays more. If the carbon tax proceeds are redistributed,
| the guy in the kitchen comes ahead, actually.
| transcriptase wrote:
| Everything in the modern world has the oil/energy needed
| to create it baked into the price.
|
| Implementing a carbon tax that increases that cost along
| every step of a supply chain increases the price of
| everything, not just gasoline.
|
| See: Price of groceries (and all other CPG) in Canada.
| People will blame the retailers and lazy headlines about
| record profits, but if you look at their actual margins,
| the value of CAD, and the fact that the government is
| increasing the population faster than anything else can
| catch up... it's not surprising that they're posting
| record numbers. People need to eat. The oligopoly issue
| definitely plays a part but that's another can of worms.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Everything in the modern world has the oil/energy
| needed to create it baked into the price.
|
| Ye, and CEO consumes more of everything, so anyone lower
| income will receive more from re-distrubtion than they
| wil pay in tax.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Yes. The alternative is having politicians and beaurocrats
| fighting about all the little details of who gets what.
|
| It's not about being fair, it's about keeping the
| politicians out of it as much as possible. It costs very
| little money to let the 1% get theirs, because by
| definition there just aren't very many of them. Thats a
| tiny price to pay for the major advantage of less political
| football.
| ip26 wrote:
| One of the big problems seems to be simply getting supporters
| to _agree_ on what to do with the money. There are plenty of
| supporters who staunchly insist the money _must_ be used
| exclusively for miscellaneous social justice causes.
| gustavus wrote:
| "Okay," I say. "Carbon credits are a bit like beating someone up
| on this side of the world and sponsoring one of those poor
| starving kids on the other side of the world to make up for the
| fact that you're a complete shit at home."
|
| ....
|
| "OK," the PFY says as we leave the building via the service
| entrance. "All we have to do to be nastiness neutral is to find a
| couple of people bound and gagged in a skip bin, take them out,
| give them a couple of wallets, unkick them a few times,
| unelectrocute them with a cattle prod and say 'clothing hippy on
| discount percent seventy look oh'."
|
| "On the other side of the world," I add.
|
| - The BOFH
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/
| realusername wrote:
| The thing which doesn't make sense with those is that it's always
| projects in developing and poor countries ... whereas the
| overwhelming majority of emissions is actually in developed
| countries.
|
| If you would conceive a scheme to reduce emissions, there's no
| way that it's going to be in any other place than the top
| emitting countries, where the emission is in the first place.
|
| Those projects are kind of shifting blame onto people and places
| which aren't causing the issue.
| voisin wrote:
| > the overwhelming majority of emissions is actually in
| developed countries.
|
| This is true, but the low hanging fruit (in terms of cost) in
| terms of drawdown might be developing countries, where things
| like birth control, paying farmer not to cut down rainforest,
| etc can be done inexpensively.
| realusername wrote:
| There's also a lot of low hanging fruits in developped
| countries, better farming techniques, electric cars, heat
| insulation, financing renewables depending of the electric
| mix, making food products with less emissions cheaper for
| consumers to shift consumption...
|
| It's true that the state has the upper hand but there's also
| things that an NGO or a private company could do.
| sofixa wrote:
| > There's also a lot of low hanging fruits in developped
| countries, better farming techniques, electric cars, heat
| insulation, financing renewables depending of the electric
| mix, making food products with less emissions cheaper for
| consumers to shift consumption...
|
| That's moderately hanging fruit, and all of it is being
| done in most EU countries and to a significant degree in
| the US.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| I once worked in the sector, and left once I realised that the
| scam is that sellers of offsets characterise a complex system as
| a simple system.
| cumshitpiss wrote:
| [dead]
| asu_thomas wrote:
| This should be news to exactly nobody.
| LapsangGuzzler wrote:
| > From project implementation until 2020, those 18 projects were
| expected to generate up to 89 million carbon offsets to be sold
| in the global carbon market. But researchers estimate that only
| 5.4 million of the 89 million, or 6.1 percent, would be
| associated with actual carbon emission reductions.
|
| It sounds like a massively fraudulent market with little actual
| oversight.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Curious about someone in the industry's opinion, but the
| problem sounds like carbon offsets should actually be treated
| as carbon offset _futures_.
|
| I.e. the value is determined at the time of _delivered_ carbon
| offsets, and the instrument 's price floats on the market
| before that time, including relative to how likely / valuable
| the delivery is
|
| If company A buys a carbon offset from entity X, and it becomes
| increasingly apparent that entity X isn't going to be able to
| deliver the face value in terms of carbon, the instrument
| bought by company A should decrease in value.
|
| Consequently, next time around, company A would not purchase
| from entity X.
|
| Which is exactly what you'd want to happen!
|
| Corollary: Verification by third party should be required, with
| less measurable schemes less valued.
|
| Multiple satellites confirming forests intact? Proof. Direct
| air capture or weathering? Proof.
|
| Some nebulous walk through how this might have influenced this
| other thing? Eh...
| wmf wrote:
| That doesn't really match the way people are using offsets.
| If you buy offsets for a flight and ten years later you learn
| that that they were ineffective... what? The least effective
| offsets having the lowest price isn't a good incentive
| either.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I don't believe the majority of VCM offsets are being
| purchased by end users. Are they? I thought they're
| typically purchased by corporate entities to support "net
| zero carbon by X year" pledges.
|
| Apparently this stuff has matured a lot in the last 10
| years, and I haven't been keeping pace with it.
|
| There's already a concept of "vintage" (i.e. year carbon
| reduction realized in), but I still don't think they're
| being traded in a floating price futures model.
|
| It sounds like the international community is leaning on
| certification-first, then sale of only certified offsets.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offsets_and_credits#
| O...
|
| ... which, doesn't feel like it fully harnesses the power
| of market investment in new technologies.
|
| If a corporate buyer finds a new technology that has
| promise, they should be able to plow money into it! (At a
| cheaper per-offset-CO2-ton price than alternatives)
|
| If that new tech delivers, the company just saved money.
| (For the same amount of CO2 offset purchase)
|
| If the new tech fails to deliver, the offset buying company
| should be forced to realize financial losses.
|
| Ergo, companies will be incentivized to invest in the most
| effective tools for future CO2 offsetting.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with carbon offsets is worse than that.
|
| First, there is no real way to tell if someone was going to
| do something anyway. You have an existing operation which is
| already cost effective to modernize because the fuel savings
| exceed the cost, so you were going to do it anyway, but now
| you get to sell credits even though the modernization would
| have happened regardless. So you have a significant amount of
| preexisting supply without motivating any real emissions
| reduction.
|
| Second, not everyone is required to buy them, so the demand
| side is artificially low.
|
| The result is that credits are available for less than
| $2/ton, or to put it another way, less than $0.02 per gallon
| of gasoline. This is obviously not going to provide any
| meaningful incentive to reduce emissions.
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| > First, there is no real way to tell if someone was going
| to do something anyway.
|
| There sort of is though, and both carbon off-setters and
| this study claim that they can
|
| Also there is plenty of demand in this market, even dodgy
| credits are worth much more than $2
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There sort of is though, and both carbon off-setters
| and this study claim that they can
|
| What they're talking about is determining if you've paid
| someone to not burn down a forest and then they do it
| _even after taking the money_. Which you could
| conceivably verify.
|
| The problem is when someone already intends not to burn
| down a forest, or do whichever other thing counts for
| credits. Then they can sell credits in exchange for
| proceeding with their existing intentions. Everyone
| already intending to do any of those things can profit
| from selling the credits, so they do and the market
| contains tons of credits that are not actually making any
| difference.
|
| > Also there is plenty of demand in this market, even
| dodgy credits are worth much more than $2
|
| https://carboncredits.com/carbon-prices-today/
|
| Offset are worth less than $2. "Credits" in the EU are
| worth significantly more, because they use "cap and
| trade", which results in significant carbon pricing but
| is manifestly unjust because it directly rewards
| companies for having been the largest polluters.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Or perhaps they're doing exactly their job but their job is not
| actually what it purports to be. It seems a bit like a modern-day
| version of indulgences.
| aSithLord wrote:
| Good luck trying to offset Popocatepetl...
| labster wrote:
| Carbon credits are the only financial instrument that is scammier
| than crypto.
| smilespray wrote:
| What about _crypto carbon credits?_
|
| https://carboncredits.com/the-top-5-carbon-crypto-companies-...
| paulddraper wrote:
| Match made in heaven
|
| Or somewhere
| jjoonathan wrote:
| _Of course_ there are so many of these that people made
| "top-N" lists.
| rohan_ wrote:
| doesn't this just mean they're priced incorrectly?
|
| like can't you have different ratings for different carbon credit
| products - the more accurate ones are priced higher?
| burkaman wrote:
| Not really, because most carbon credits are based on
| counterfactuals - would this forest have been logged if you
| didn't protect it, would this farmer have used less efficient
| practices if you hadn't paid them, would this land have
| remained empty if you hadn't paid to plant trees, etc. No
| matter how reputable the rating agency is, they still won't be
| able to answer these questions very accurately.
|
| Additionally, when you purchase a credit you're generally
| purchasing a prediction of how much carbon might be absorbed in
| the future. For a afforestation credit, you're often purchasing
| the amount of carbon that forest will absorb over 100 years. No
| rating agency can legitimately tell you that your forest isn't
| going to burn down or be logged in the next century. It's a
| pretty ridiculous idea - the seller, purchaser, and rating
| agency will all probably not exist after 100 years, and the
| government of whatever country the forest is in will probably
| have been overthrown.
|
| I think contributing money to protect and rewild nature in the
| interest of increasing carbon sequestration is a great idea
| that should continue, but nobody should be receiving offsets
| that they weigh 1-to-1 against their actual real-world
| emissions. It just isn't a meaningful comparison. Even if your
| purchase actually makes an impact, it's like dumping toxic
| chemicals into a river and setting aside money to fund an
| organization that will gradually clean up the river over the
| next century, and then claiming that you've now achieved net-
| zero pollution.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I would argue carbon offsets are exactly doing their job:
| allowing people and corporations to throw a bit of money at the
| problem and continue with business as usual.
|
| They are the equivalent of medieval indulgences.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Cynical take:
|
| The job of the carbon offset is one or more of the following:
| - Assuage guilt - Virtue signal (personal, political,
| or corporate) - Profit financially from government
| incompetence - Profit financially from corporate PR
| efforts
| tito wrote:
| We absolutely need a working market to meet decarbonization
| goals for a stable climate. The state of the current market
| means there's a lot of opportunity for improvement.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| The issue is that carbon offsets are poorly defined/regulated and
| are therefore almost never "honest". The definition of "honest"
| here, is that a purchased offset should represent a unit of
| carbon that has already been removed from the atmosphere.
|
| Instead, we have "offsets" that claim to remove carbon at some
| arbitrary point in the future, or worse, are an "expected
| reduction of carbon output of some nebulous projects in the
| future", which is how a lot of offsets actually operate. Even if
| valid, and one's purchased unit of offset carbon is actually
| mitigated at some point in the future, this doesn't negate the
| impact of the carbon that was emitted today until that point in
| the future that it's mitigated.
|
| Today's cost of atmospheric carbon capture is several hundred
| dollars / ton. If you find yourself "offsetting" for a few
| dollars / ton, you're just fooling yourself.
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| > Today's cost of atmospheric carbon capture is several hundred
| dollars / ton.
|
| For stuff like direct air capture, not for afforestation.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Same issue of "honesty" with afforestation-based credits. A
| ton of carbon removed during the growth of a new tree is not
| equivalent to a ton of carbon already removed today.
|
| However, as these types of projects actually do remove
| carbon, one could probably compute an adjustment factor and
| purchase additional credits to achieve an "honest" offset.
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's assuming the afforestation is even helpful and not
| one of the various examples of incentives for planting
| trees leading to work that's actually doing more harm than
| good.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Out of all the nebulous carbon offset schemes that exist
| today, afforestation seems to be one of the least scammy
| options if ones adjusts for the fact that "future value"
| != "present value". Even the uncertainty of the long-term
| success of afforestation projects can be statistically
| modelled and incorporated into an adjustment factor.
| However, nobody is going to willingly do that, so even
| those types of offsets will remain dishonest.
|
| Absent regulation, carbon offsets are a race to the
| bottom in producing the cheapest "offset" just hovering
| above the threshold of "fraudulent".
|
| Direct air capture with long-term sequestration,
| performed prior to the sale of a carbon credit, is the
| only scheme that is remotely close to being fully honest.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| That's an interesting comment. I hadn't really ever
| considered that afforestation might be a bad thing -
| always just assumed "more trees = good". In what sort of
| examples would it be a bad thing? Trying to create
| forests in places that naturally weren't forests in the
| past?
| finite_depth wrote:
| [dead]
| ngcazz wrote:
| Great moment to plug Climate Town's video from a couple years
| back on precisely this https://youtu.be/EIezuL_doYw
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