Lifestyle vs offsetting as effective GHG emission reduction strategies

[Philip Frey]

Calculating my own emissions and trying to figure out the impact of various lifestyle changes, I stumbled on the estimate that my efforts of living on 2-3 tonnes of CO2e per year compared to the UK consumption-based average of say 9 tonnes per year has a whopping economic value of $60-70 per year.

This is based on an estimate of being able to buy CO2 offsetting at $10/tonne. This report compares various lifestyles choices (living car free, not having children, green heating etc.) with the conclusion that they all pale in comparison to a donation of $1000 per year towards offsetting.

Report: https://founderspledge.com/stories/clim ... le-report
Calculations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1184765917





My lifestyle (in ERE lingo) is primarily for intrinsic Renaissance man reasons, so I'm not jumping to become a jet-setting hyperspecialist and then donating a bunch of money based on this information. However, it does raise the question when it comes to marginal decisions and in what kind of things I should promote for impact.

Now, I realise that:

1) there are questions around many offsetting projects in terms of whether they actually create genuine offsets
2) offsetting alone as a strategy might not be able to scale enough, or cheap enough to completely solve the issue
3) sending $10 to your airline to ease an oppulent consumerist conscience might be what offsetting is/is set to be in popular culture

But:

1) even if the estimate is off by say 10x, the $1000/year goes very far and a lot of us can do much more than that
2) what I can personally move into offsetting or can convince others to is not likely to exhaust the current scale
3) this doesn't concern me/us

I'm guessing this might be the right forum to find people who have approached this problem from this angle. If slowing down global warming is an important goal to someone to what extent should donating money towards and promoting carbon offsetting play a part in that?

[7Wannabe5]

I have thought about this, but it seems like it ultimately amounts to making land expensive for poor people. Whether this is second order effect a good thing is beyond my ken. Way to avoid this dilemma would be to do the money math for doing it in your own locale. For simplistic instance, cost to buy a strip mall parking lot and convert/maintain it as arboretum.

[ellarose24]

I have researched your first 1) extensively and found that it is almost impossible to verify if you are creating genuine offsets. There is also a valid criticism that buying carbon offsets is similar to buying indulgences from the Catholic church to absolve you of your sins.

I think it's similar to recycling, it's already been placed into the system and there isn't really any "taking" it back without expending even more energy.

It is probably better to find local conservation efforts that are small and scaleable and try to do things that you care about in terms of the environment. My problem with this is that even these are inefficient and spend money on stupid crap outside of their goal, and are often funded by corps that make you raise your eyebrows. I have stopped donating at all because of this.

I think the best place to put your money would actually be towards other humans. Reducing poverty and increasing access to education and health care reduces birth rates as well as religious fundamentalism (which emphasizes birth rates) and preventing 1 human life is likely more impactful than planting any number of trees. Or planned parenthood.

[slsdly]

I've bought enough to offset a really bad year at one point, to see what sort of communications I would receive, if I felt any satisfaction. I did not repeat the experiment. Part of me thinks they took the money and ran hah.

I don't believe for one minute that they can deliver 1 tonne of CO2 reduction for $10 (USD?). Planet Air in Canada sells you an offset for $22.50/tonne of CO2. If the average Canadian emits 16 tonnes, and there are 38 million Canadians, it would cost just shy of 14 billion dollars a year to not emit anything. In the years prior to COVID, the federal government spent 300-330 billion dollars a year. That's under 5%.

Either that, or this really is a trivially solved problem and I'm a little surprised we have chosen the path of ecocide.

One example of CO2 reduction in Canada was that they installed a process to burn off methane gas being produced by a dump instead of venting it directly into the air. They didn't produce power from it (at the time -- that was a future project). They sold offsets every year to keep burning the methane. It feels strange to keep paying them to burn the methane with equipment they already have, and they do nothing to capture the energy that was produced. Would they not burn the methane if they didn't sell enough offsets that year?

[ellarose24]

I believe I googled this about a year ago--I'm just going to give you the first article I get:

Most important: https://features.propublica.org/brazil- ... -cambodia/

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/the- ... ally-work/

"Tree planting is frequently lauded by companies such as Shell and BP as the answer to the climate emergency. Forests are one of our best lines of defence against climate change and restoring them is crucial, but this can’t be a substitute for reducing carbon emissions directly.
A newly-planted tree can take as many as 20 years to capture the amount of CO2 that a carbon-offset scheme promises. We would have to plant and protect a massive number of trees for decades to offset even a fraction of global emissions. Even then, there is always the risk that these efforts will be wiped out by droughts, wildfires, tree diseases and deforestation.
When trees and plants die, whether from fires or logging or simply old age, most of the carbon they have trapped in their trunks, branches and leaves returns to the atmosphere. Changes in the climate mean that droughts and higher temperatures will strain forests in the future. The risk is that trees planted as part of offsetting projects could become a source of emissions if they die prematurely. Carbon “stored” in trees or other ecosystems is not the same as fossil carbon left underground. "

https://www.wired.com/story/do-carbon-o ... e-details/

" A 2019 investigation by ProPublica found Brazilian forest-based carbon offset projects failed because loggers cut down trees after the offsets were sold to US and European corporations. “You have to have an approved methodology and make sure the science is sound,” says Naomi Swickard, Verra’s chief market development officer."

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019 ... ts-a-scam/

[chenda]

Planting giant redwoods in the UK, which will absorb a lifetime of carbon. It looks a pretty reputable scheme from what I can tell:

https://www.thegreatreserve.org/buy-personal