"Lets talk about carbon offsets: what they are, what they claim to do, and how they may actually be making things even worse."
Some 🔥🔥🔥🔥 from last night:
Conversation
Calling out some pretty sketchy avoided deforestation projects. The problem with creating counterfactuals is that they are fiendishly difficult to prove, and create all kinds of perverse incentives to figure out ways to get paid for what you were already doing...
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For more on the challenges of corporate carbon offsets via avoided deforestation and tree planting, see my guest essay in the a few months back:
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"When you buy an offset so you can pollute more and that offset is bullshit, you are now actively making things worse."
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Nice - had an equally (or more) brutal takedown:
youtube.com/watch?v=iCRDse
(with similar levels of profanity as )
And for people who want something a bit more academic - a blog (& paper) on problems with net-zero (and offsets):
brookings.edu/blog/planetpol
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Hot take: he missed the mark while pandering to cheap cynicism of the moment. He was so close too. Offsets aren’t the problem, bullshit offsets are. If we abandon offsets altogether, instead of repairing the system, we‘re screwed
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But worth emphasising you *can* still do a lot to fight climate change!
For individuals, donate to effective climate charities – see 's recs
For companies, accelerate green RD&D – see & co's frontierclimate.com
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