I agree that some carbon offsets / credits are "high quality", i.e. represent actual, durable reductions in someone's emissions. They can help with the important projects you mention.

When the result is to durably sequester carbon from the atmosphere, I also agree that this is a good contribution toward net zero. I don't know anything about mangrove planting, but that sounds like it might fit. Certainly the Climeworks project someone mentioned elsewhere in this discussion fits.

The problem is with "avoided emissions" offsets. Suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop. That's a half solution, but it is often treated as a complete solution: X looks good because they bought an offset, and Y looks good because they're no longer emitting anything. That's the shell game.

Concretely, let's consider rainforest preservation. This is critically important, and plausibly (I don't actually know a lot about it) requires payments to relevant actors in places like Brazil. So yes, as a society, we need to come up with money for those payments. But we need to come up with that money in a way that doesn't let some other polluter permanently off the hook for their emissions. If an airline pays to protect some rainforest, says "hey look an offset", and declares victory, how will we ever address the airline's emissions? We've done some good in the short run (we accelerated the effort to preserve the rainforest), but then we arrive at a dead end.

Cap-and-trade systems avoid this problem, if all of the buyers and sellers of credits are part of the system, and the cap is gradually reduced to zero. But if a company says "my plan to reach net zero relies heavily on purchasing offsets", outside of a cap-and-trade system that eventually squeezes avoided-emissions offsets to zero, then we're back to the shell game.

> The problem is with "avoided emissions" offsets. Suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop. That's a half solution, but it is often treated as a complete solution: X looks good because they bought an offset, and Y looks good because they're no longer emitting anything. That's the shell game.

Incredibly well put.

So, effectively, one actor's emissions can be made to count for twice its effect through the accounting trick that involves one actor paying the other for having reduced their emissions.

However -- is this really a bad thing? Sure, it's not the full solution, but it's effectively a privately sponsored economic bonus for those actors that do choose to reduce their emissions.

Sure, it should probably be rebranded so it's clear this is actually what happens. "Carbon-reduction contingent donation" or something.

When thinking of simple goods or services it seems fine that I can buy a car and then sell it. That's part of property rights.

For other things like a medical prescription, driving license or degree certificate it seems correct that these things are somehow tied to an individual.

Capitalism has evolved to allow transfer of many non-tangibles. Financialisation is really the ability to trade companies, and more importantly "titles and rights". Eventually this has extended to buying and selling debts. Through this mechanism we've accepted, in the limit, the trading of responsibility.

Yet there are already obvious limits to this. If I murder a man I cannot sell that burden by contract, such that if I'm convicted another will go to prison in my stead.[1]

These carbon trades feel a little bit more like this last case than selling a car. Should one get to commit a tangible harm and then offload the responsibility? [2]

[1] actually I think this may have been historically possible in some cultures.

[2] This is a Kantian question - because clearly under Utilitarian analysis I can simply claim a "greater good is served".

The problem with carbon offsets is not some moral question about my offloading my guilt to another party. The problem is that there's double-counting. Going back to the scenario, "suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop". Let's break that down:

1. Initially, X is emitting greenhouse gases. I'm not sure moral terminology is helpful here, but for the sake of discussion, we can say X is "guilty".

2. Initially, Y is also emitting greenhouse gases, they are also "guilty".

3. X makes a payment to Y, and Y halts their emissions.

If we say that Y is no longer guilty, because they stopped emitting, then we must say that X is still guilty.

If we say that X is no longer guilty, because they purchased an offset from Y, then we must say that Y is still guilty: they started out guilty, and they sold off the rights to their compensating action (halting emissions) to X.

We started with two guilty parties, and only one compensating / atoning action was performed. There is no coherent framework in which it can be said that both parties are now innocent.

edit: some clarity

The wheels of progress are at least turning and carbon is being captured.

but the sale of the emission offsets by Y has no stipulation that the revenue be spent on research and development of better capabilities?

Unfairness/inequity. That's why I said my question was not a Utilitarian one. I do not speak for the PP.

edit: removed possible smartass condescension

I see this as “I made a mess in the street and I hired cleaners to clean it up.” Sure, I didn’t do the cleaning myself, but I’m still being responsible for it, right?

Interesting. Yes, this is the closest of your choices. Not quite Biblical Sin :), but that will do for the moment.

Please note that I asked a genuine, good-faith moral question. I'm not making an assertion here.

I removed a remark that "perceived fairness is often more important in human-centred affairs than summative outcomes" - but then noticed that you teach human centred design and obviously get that. So let's explore it together.

> many are reforestation projects in the developing world.

Regardless of how "good" the purchased offset is, it does not impact the Kantian moral argument - in particular I am thinking about universalisabilty. I don't think it matters whether one bribes the rich or poor in this case. the question is about the ethics of transferable responsibility - for which I used the obviously extreme edge case of buying immunity from murder charges.

> I see this as "I made a mess in the street and I hired cleaners to clean it up." Sure, I didn't do the cleaning myself, but I’m still being responsible for it, right?

No, I think that's where I would differ. Let's say you made the mess the next day, and the next, and the one after... and each day you pay someone to clean it up. You're not off the hook. Somewhat like the broken window fallacy, you're still creating a net loss to society. Unless you think those cleaners have nothing better to do with their lives than labour cleaning up your mess.

Let's consider another slightly more ordinary place this logic operates and fails. Parking or speeding fines. Why do we have motoring restrictions? Ultimately it's to reduce loss of life. Careless driving or parking gets people killed. But paltry fines have no effect on those who simply see it as an extra charge to be factored into being an anti-social driver. Now suppose that instead I can simply pay another driver to stay at home so I can speed around by the local school and park across the hospital entrance.

Being "responsible for it" would be not making the mess in the first place. You're "making amends for it" - those would be better words. But if that delivers no deterrence from doing it again, a fundamental aspect of justice necessary for regulating human affairs is not served.

We do pay people to clean up our messes. There's entire industries of janitors, street sweepers, repairmen and garbage disposal. Which provides additional jobs, increases time for everyone else to do other things and increases the economic pie. Do carbon offsets work differently?

> it does not impact the Kantian moral argument

Do we care about some moral argument, or do we care about mitigating climate change?

That X has happened in the past is not a moral argument for X

> Do we care about some moral argument, or do we care about mitigating climate change?

That's a false dichotomy since the two are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, we do care about some moral argument, and indeed all moral arguments. They often get down to the root causes quicker than 5Y analysis. For a gentle introduction to the intersection of ethics and systems theory see [1].

[1] https://donellameadows.org/donella-meadows-legacy/danas-teac...

This an economic argument, not a moral one, and I think it's wrong. In theory.

Presumably, the idea is that if you can afford to pay to fix the mess, you have rendered sufficient credit to society to offset the loss caused by making the mess. And if we assume that both you and the mess-cleaner are rational agents, and you choose to pay somebody else to fix the mess instead of doing it yourself (or not making it in the first place), and they choose to take your money to clean it up instead of doing something else, then we must conclude that cleaning (or not making) the mess was not an efficient use of your time, and was an efficient use of theirs.

The reason this feels weird is because tons of people have way more money than they should, and others have way less than they should. Idealized capitalism breaks down in a world where rich people can sit back and watch money pour in for free from their "investments".

Yes that was precisely my point.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

As you say yourself, there's no basis to the "assumption" of nice rational actors in a zero sum game within in a singular homogeneous society of little Bayesian utility maximisers - that's precisely the simplistic fantasy that's landed us in this damn awful mess. Some people get away with it. Some get screwed over. Hence I am questioning such moral arithmetic.

For instance, I was just in Dubai. Wow, that is an unsustainable city. Except that they are plowing wealth into solar. It is 13% solar powered today (plenty of sun in those parts) and will be 100% by 2050. That’s great. But the world needs time to transition. And if we can buy time by creating revenue streams for saving rainforest lands and mangrove forests and the like, that’s a win win. But it still isn’t enough without the tech.

And yes, sure, it would be great if no one drove cars or flew. But short of economic collapse, we need time to transition. What am i missing?

For the last decade or so the major strategy has been carbon neutral energy grid by using the logic that if the total exports of green energy surpasses the consumption of fossil fuel energy then the net sum is positive. The assumption is that the export will displace fossil fuel energy. The result is that under this plan fossil fuel plants can continue to operate since its more profitable to export green energy than shutting down fossil fuel plants, and since nations need large capacity in transitions lines to do exports they can also increase imports. More and longer life time of existing fossil fuel plants, and increased consumption of imported fossil fuel generated energy, while politicians can claim that the grid is green.

The strategy share much of the articles criticisms of carbon offset. The assumption that the exported energy will create avoided emissions is taken as a fact rather than a theory, with poor evaluation of the quality. If Everyone Did It, the strategy wouldn't work. Everyone can't just export massive amount of green energy while continuing burning more fossil fuels. Someone somewhere need to actually stop burning fossil fuel for emissions to go down. And like the article noticed, the market forces do not align to encourage people to stop emitting carbon.

But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in:

1. It is often presented as a a complete solution, rather than a helpful interim step. A company announces plans to offset their emissions, and then declares victory. But it is only a half victory; between the offset seller and the offset purchaser, only half of the total emissions have been addressed.

2. It removes the incentive to start developing solutions for the more difficult categories of emissions. It will take time to decarbonize, say, steel manufacturing. But we need to start developing pilot projects today. If the steel manufacturers can say "we're addressing climate change, we've purchased offsets", then no one is paying for those pilot projects.

I shared some more thoughts about this in an older post: https://climateer.substack.com/p/focus-on-2050.

i would assume offsets have to be purchased continuously - that is, you cannot purchase an offset once and be done with it forever.

I also assume that there's limited offsets that could be purchased, and it's not growing unless money is put into making more offsets possible (e.g., enlarging a rain forest, not merely protecting it).

This means every year, there would be more competition to purchase offsets from all participants, raising the price of offset. Eventually, the price would be high enough that it's more profitable just save emissions yourself - e.g, those pilot projects.

But if you predict this, you would start doing those pilot projects sooner, and beat your competition!

So why isn't this true today? The assumptions i made must be wrong - so which assumption is wrong?

So, yeah, people think it's the complete solution, at least locally.

In 2025, the amount of greenhouses emitted will get the world in the following years to +1.5ºC (when compared to 1750, before the industrialization).

We are already experiencing the effects of the climate dereliction, despite being around +1.25ºC (I'd need to chech that figure). Australia's current unknown floods will be followed by a summer of fires and temperature above 50ºC. The drought in the USA is alarming etc etc.

To avoid reaching +2ºC, the world would need the multiply the current transition trend by a factor... 33.

Above +2ºC, the climate will enter into self-reinforcing effects. The Amazon forest is on the verge of becoming an savanna: such a very large forest produce its own rain. By mid-april 2022, a larger surface of Amazon forest has been burnt than during 2021, the previous highest record.

The Covid and Putin's revolting invasion of Ukraine is masking a fundamental trend: the agricultural yields are already falling almost everywhere because of climate dereliction (about 20% less the recent years). That is the true reason for the huge inflation of food prices.

We just don't have the time for that kind of slow transition in the hope that some wonderful technical breakthrough will save us all.

I'm not the one saying that: just read the 111 page of the sum-up of the IPCC reports just published. Thousands of scientists have participated. Their climate model is now well tuned. The previous reports proved to be already reliable, and even by far too optimistic.

If you believe in Science, then you can't stay in the delusion that we are doing anything near what is necessary to tackle the issue.

Believing that Science and Technology will somehow provide the breakthroughs soon enough to stay under +2ºC is at best a convenient wishful thinking, but more likely magical thinking.

Why? Because the whole subject has been worked on by thousands of scientists in the past 40 years. One can not believe in Science only when it fits one's way of life.

"The future is already here, but not evenly distributed": The solutions exist. It has been shown that their costs to the world economic growth is far cheaper than the current quasi-inaction.

If we invest massively, we are quite capable of handling it. We don't need any breakthroughs. I'm optimistic that some will occur if we focus.

But the whole thing is classic game theory situation: everybody wins if everybody cooperates, but each country will be better off doing nothing while the others pay the cost of transition.

So we do nothing. At least nothing near the acceleration by a factor 33.

Don't trust me. Read the IPCC 111 pages and make your own opinion.

Sorry for the gloomy post. I can't help myself believing in Science.

Sorry, but that's not necessarily true. Photosynthesis intensity increases with elevated CO2 [1] and decreases with higher temperatures. The exact effect of higher yields from more CO2, lower yields from temperatures, and increased arable land area from higher temperatures is not well known.

There's been a lot more extreme weather events - case in point : australia (recently floods - a lot of them, and the long term drought for over a decade). I'm sure similar stories could be seen in other parts of the world.

Furthermore, our pollution (plastic, pesticide s, fertilizers, synthetic materials of all kinds, oil spills, etc etc) is destroying the fertile soils, depleting them from its biodiversity. The ratio living creatures of all sizes per ounce of soil is decreasing. Intensive agriculture of cereals for example with Monsanto seeds and pesticides leads to a 80% loss of " life" inside the soil.

To make that worse, the climate warming destroys biodiversity because it rises far too fast for the Nature to adapt. A forest can move one meter per year in direction of the climate best adapted: the seeds on the less adapted climate die but the seeds on the better side grow. The natural climate cycles varies by a few degrees per 10 000 years (in a global average). The human impact will soon have risen the average temperature of 2ºC in 200 years.

Otherwise, yes, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is making the forests rise faster in many places. But it is far from compensating the emissions. And the huge fires in Australia, USA and Siberia, plus the going Amazon forest ecocide have emitted an immense tonnage of CO2.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1701762114

Don't they benefit from the status quo? It's not the companies that get scammed, it's the people who select the cheap "offset my carbon footprint" option when getting a plane ticket and pay for JetBlue to transfer that money to some scammy offsetting service. JetBlue gets good PR for contributing to "carbon offsetting programs" on behalf of customers - which are cheap enough because the market is not heavily regulated.

I don't trust international corporations to do anything but optimize to make more money.

What the world needs are clear and hard bans: no more import of meat from Brazil until the country provably prevents further razing of the Amazonas rain forest, a hard cap on flights per person and year to two or four (with reasonable allowance for people in multi-national relationships, expats and the likes), a ban on twenty different brands of yogurt (or any other product class) in stores, and most importantly a hard cap on vehicle size and gas consumption: no fat SUV/truck until you prove to the government you have a reasonable need for such a vehicle. Everyone else gets a standard electric vehicle that serves their needs (i.e. singles and no-child households get either a single 2-seater standard car or two Smart-sized cars, and families get a 3+number_of_children sized car).

Yes, part of this sounds like "omg communism!!!" but the sooner people realize that the status quo is not sustainable and never has been, the better.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/04/carbon-f...

[1] https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemit...

1) Even if we would order a new plant now, it would only be ready in 10-15 years. Building the equivalent amount in wind, solar and battery for storage would be ready faster and cheaper overall.

2) We don't have a permanent, safe place to dump the waste - the "old" reactors might be grandfathered in, but I can't imagine the BVerfG to let anything new pass that would expose future generations to the liability of dealing with the waste.

3) We don't have the cooling capacity - even back when we had more nuclear plants, they had to be regularly limited in power output in the summer because the rivers would get too hot otherwise.

Yes, except what they are really buying is regulatory compliance, not meaningful reduction.

I do agree with your general sentiment though.

Yes. The idea that you can use "many businesses believe in concept X, including lots of banks" as a metric for determining the value of an idea is absurd on its face.

Notice all the financial institutions self-congratulatory boasting a few years ago about divesting from thermal coal. Little odd how that wasn't timed with any new revelation about climate change or coal in the past 50 years, but rather exactly with sagging coal price and estimates of peak coal and continued demand collapse and replacement by cheaper sources. They've gone a little quiet about that since coal prices skyrocketing 5x to historic highs in the past year.

God help us if the big banks are the only ones who can save us.

If there really was going to be some justice for people's crimes in this life in the next I'd suggest that William Nordhaus might, looking back 1000 years from now, be seen as the most evil person in history.

https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-winning-economics-of...

You might assign 100 million or so deaths to the communist and fascist movements, but a real climate crisis could kill 10x or 50x that.

Nordhaus brought climate change into the space of neoliberalism and promoted the idea that trading carbon credits could fix it.

If we go down this road in 30 years people are going to be saying "we need an all-of-the-above approach... it could have a HUGE impact ... give it a little time."

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1918128117

Which is why people never really take such estimates seriously, it’s far too arbitrarily a number to really mean much.

It is trivial to identify many examples where they are neck-deep in investments that run counter to the stated goals of environmental movements. Oil investments are a very simple example, but so is the continued financial support for companies which dump toxic waste into public lands. If there is no accountability now, how the hell will there be more accountability when they get even more fingers in more pies?

Investment relies on a simple idea: that the investment returns more money than you put in. Which part of what you've described makes that expectation compatible with solutions to the climate crisis?

Climate change is incomparable to many of the so-called "problems" you may point to.

Of course, if you argue that there wouldn't be as much development and energy use under communism, then i agree - but that means the "problem" is not the economic system, but lifestyle and energy use. If people were willing to sacrifice their energy use - aka, no cars, no transport, no plastic products etc.

Under a non-capitalist system (at least from an anarchists perspective), the people affected would also be the ones to decide how much to emit -- and it's unlikely they would be as crazy about climate change.

(Not to mention that assuming "the lifestyle of today" where a small fraction of a percentage of the population does most of the consumption would be sustainable under anything other than capitalism seems like a mistake.)

The emissions from a coal plant somewhere across the ocean affects my weather here in California. In an anarchy, are you saying I would get a voice in the operation of that remote coal plant? How would that work, exactly?

The logistics of how to reach world-wide consensus, or at least something close to it, is an interesting question I don't have an answer to! Maybe coal plants would be practically impossible under anarchy, due to the consensus difficulties -- which one might argue is as it should be.

How would this be enforced? You wouldn't get any coal miners or other material providers to help you unless you can show your coal plant is truly something humanity at large either wants, or at least does not care about.