The Carbon Offset Problem
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended in greenwashing and offset threads as a well-sourced, detailed explanation of how offsets underdeliver.
What it is
Wendover Productions examines why carbon offsets so often fail to reduce emissions, covering specific examples and the perverse incentives in offset schemes.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2022 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec cowpig · 2022-08 · on “Carbon offsetting is just another form of greenwashing”
I think this video by Wendover Productions does a much better job than the article of both highlighting specific examples and laying out the perverse incentive structures that carbon offsetting creates: [this video] Here is the list of sources for that video if you're interested: [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK] [5] [LINK] [6] [LINK] [7] [LINK] [8] [LINK] [9] [LINK] [10] [LINK] [11] [LINK] [12] [LINK]
Recommends Aunche · 2022-06 · on “Where are all the crypto use cases?”
> Filecoin - A commodity market for storage that's currently 0.0011% the cost of S3. This actually proves that there isn't a real use case of Filecoin aside from speculation. Amazon isn't making 99.9989% profit margins on S3, nor is it possible for Filecoin to be a hundred thousand times more efficient than S3. This means that Filecoin's storage product is so uncompetitive that you need to subsidize it a hundred thousand times just to get people to use it. > Toucan - Tradable Carbon Credits All the other use cases listed look like parodies of crypto products with plenty of buzzwords, and no real substance. However, this one is especially nonsensical. From their website: > Working with top De
Recommends Aunche · 2022-08 · on “Carbon offsetting is just another form of greenwashing”
Wendover Productions recently made a very informative video about carbon offsets that goes into much more detail. Certain types of carbon offsets do work, but even those tend to underdeliver. [this video]
Recommends rmvt · 2023-02 · on “Vestas unveils solution to end landfill disposal for wind turbine blades”
> Carbon offsetting is needlessly and cynically attacked by the same people who talk about wind power killing birds or not recycling the blades. well i don't really understand how you can lump all those together but ok... they're still not the same. as others have pointed out, it doesn't seem hard (or hard enough) to scam in this business sector - i.e. having the same assets accounting for different offset purchases, or just conflating assets bought for different puroses with offsetting. furthermore, it just deviates us from what should be the true goal: reduce fossil fuel consumption. not to mention how big business just offload this shady business cost to the end consumer. i'm taking the c
Recommends sofixa · 2023-06 · on “”
If you like the video format, Wendover has a very good 20 minute video on the topic, discussing the pitfalls and how non-obvious failure modes of carbon offset schemes can be: [this video]
Recommends plopz · 2023-08 · on “Shell Quietly Shelves a Radical Plan to Shrink Its Carbon Footprint”
the bigger problem with carbon offsets is that the underlying system that is supposed to be backing the units aren't actually offsetting any carbon. wendover has a nice video on it [this video]