- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
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Carbon offsets would only work if the sequestration strategy is permanent, which implies doing waaaaay more than any of these joke offerings can do. Like... plant entire new forests that will never be developed. Ever.
Like recycling, it's also mostly a PR thing to take the perceived onus for addressing a problem that's fundamentally caused by how industry is organized and shift it into individual consumers - who will never succeed at addressing the problem because the interventions are inherently inadequate.
Carbon offset always smelt of a scam to me. There's no magic bullet that makes negates your actions just by throwing money at it
And yet, in the US our politicians will still tout carbon offsets or carbon credits as if they are a solution to anything. The PR realizes that carbon-credits or carbon-offsets are bullshit the public has started to pickup on, so now they use "carbon capture" or "net-zero carbon." But make no mistakes, there isn't an environmental party that exists in the US, or anywhere else for that matter.
https://www.energy.gov/articles/biden-harris-administration-announces-25-billion-cut-pollution-and-deliver-economic
"President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act features substantial improvements to the federal Section 45Q tax credit for the capture and geologic storage of CO2, which provides additional incentives to help enable wide-scale project deployment."
These are subsidies to the Energy Sector btw.
Carbon credits aren't necessarily a bad idea. It basically sets a hard limit for the amount of carbon that can be produced, and the ability to produce can be sold. Now, the way it should be handled is every person is provided with a certain amount of credit, and they can sell them and make money off of them, bargain with them, or just choose not to give them up reducing the amount of carbon that is allowed to be produced. It should be up to the people.
Some amount of carbon will always be released. It should be handled in the way that best benefits the people, not the capitalists. Carbon credits may be part of that solution, but not in the form they usually take.
Okay here's my alternate climate plan: we execute the richest person alive, and keep doing this until we get below a net worth of $10M, then we re-evaluate and see if we've solved the problem.
"I am going to start making money by cutting down trees. But in order to offset the amount of trees I cut down, I will also plant a tree every year"
"weird, why is the forest disappearing?"
