I'm having trouble finding a problem with these things besides that they feel wrong.
In my mind it's pretty easy to see an issue: Dirty company buys credits from Clean company and continues polluting. But I don't know exactly how these carbon credit/offsets work. So I started doing a little reading.
Carbon offsets can be bought online, and so are REC's and buying these things is an incentive to businesses to make them in the first place. They're made by their practices being validated and certified, with carbon emissions measured and that factors into how the REC's and offsets are counted. REC's are meant for businesses it seems, and offsets for either individual or busines.
Ok, so then, any business that wants to sound like they're env friendly should just buy a bunch of these things and then keep doing whatever they're doing. So I looked around. Micro$oft does this and published their results in a paper called "Beyond Carbon Neutral", they declared attempts to get neutral in 2012 I guess. And then I also thought, well what about grants? Could one exploit offsets by grabbing grant money, then making something shitty but somehow buying offsets or paying into it somehow? caafi.org/resources/fundingopportunities.aspx the first opp here is Carbon Neutral Liquid Fuels. So I don't know how you'd make anything off this…
Basically, all I see is an idea that they want to make an artificial market for carbon offsets/RECs that's basically powered by people's faith and hope that doing that small amount will offset their own emissions and help stave off global warming.
Help me out Holla Forums. I know there are some physics fags and other smart people here. How are REC's and Carbon Offset's a scam?
Switch the subject to Here is a redpill on carbon offsets
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Blake Johnson
IMO Carbon offsets are a really good idea in a cap and trade scenario where the state sets the cap and then can lower it over time. Where companies have to get permits annually it makes sense.
It's a stupid idea in the case of the Kyoto Protocol, which had a caveat in it to encourage developing countries to sign on where developed countries could pay for sustainable development and the carbon it offsets would count towards their own goals. What's different really is the timeframe, where in the case countries would reach carbon neutrality on paper and then look around and realize they're not actually carbon neutral and that they still have to somehow address all of the carbon their country is physically emitting.
Owen Hernandez
I don't really want to be banned from Holla Forums though. And since I don't have any real hard evidence either way I don't think the mod's would appreciate it.
Connor Taylor
Market solutions for market problems as they say. There's no inherent market for limiting externalities by definition, so you make one via policy.
Nathaniel Young
There's no scam, goyim. Just keep buying your carbon credits. It's a great way to virtue-signal to all those hot EPA shiksas.
Logan Torres
This is what I was thinking about initially, since as more and more companies become able to earn credits, you flood the market and therefore reduce demand. But if you do that then it makes it cheaper for dirty companies to buy the credits doesn't it? I mean, they're worth less, but still. What's to stop there being 100 clean companies and one giant coorp that makes huge profits on the bottom line because they use cheap energy?
I'm not familiar. Could you give me some high level? The case you mention, about developed nations finanicing smaller one's is interesting but sounds kinda like my above situation but instead of companies it's nations.
I had to look up what externalities are. Still, I get the idea here, but it doesn't really seem like an effective one you know? Like, you make a market to say: don't pollute so much and you'll get these RECs you can sell. But then the pollution just goes somewhere else. So it sounds like it's just going to end up with the developed nations exploiting the lesser developed ones.
In that article this stuck out to me: >One of the reasons rates are low is that the city and its co-owners eight years ago invested $11.5 million in a state-of-the-art air scrubber that qualified the plant to earn the highest value renewable energy credits. They’re able to sell those to out-of-state utilities (who need to meet their standards but lack clean generating stations of their own) and then—to meet their own renewable standards—buy back cheaper credits to cover the power. 'The net profit—$6 to $9 million a year—is used to offset the rates Burlington Electric charges customers. “It’s a terrific model for cities across the country,” says Sandra Levine, senor attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation’s Montpelier office. “With the challenges of climate change, we should be looking to our electricity sector to move away from fossil fuels and this is a good way to do it.”
This site feels pretty left leaning given their love of the word justice, so their viewpoint isn't that surprising. TL;DR: Using a market for offsets breeds fraud/normalizes pollution so long as you try to net it as 0 by pushing pollution somewhere else. This is what I keep coming back to. Making a market for offsets and whatnot does seem to basically say, fuck regulations, let the free market sort it out. But the market won't work without regulations right? Or am I wrong?
I don't want this thread to go into a climate change is real or not thread, we've had those before. I just want to know how carbon offset's specifically are shit. Because I see how you can buy them. But I can't find out how an individual would sell them. And if you can't sell them, then how do you make a profit? If you can't make a profit why would you get into the market?
Aiden Green
we should all power society off steampunk engines obviously.
Hudson Smith
Obviously don't bother reading all this if it seems to be answering questions you weren't having.
I happen to take an environmental economics class at Middlebury once (just a bit south of burlington).
What's implied by market solutions to market problems is that a well-designed policy will harness the creative power of the market and a poorly designed one will be inefficient even if it's meant. Remember that even if they're leftist, people who propose these things are economists first and environmentalists/liberals etc second.
So think about what the alternatives would be: the alternative to a market-based solutions are broadly called "command and control" which means the government is dictating things. This might mean dictating a certain type of technology (coal scrubbers that meet certain requirements) but if the government is doing this then they have to be really flexible and make sure that these standards are up to the standards we think they are, there's a lot of administrative burden, and allows no room for innovation, and often doesn't encourage it. Plus the EPA doesn't really have the resources for that sort of thing.
A cap-and-trade allows companies individually and society through markets to make decisions about where it would be efficient to reduce carbon. Think about carbon emissions as a resource that's being allocated through the market. The first point that you might be getting at is the initial allocation of permits. There are lots of ways to do this and lots of problems but it's not really inherent to the cap and trade system. It could be based on the number of employees, it could be based on the sector they're in, it could be gross income, whatever.
But at the end of the day if there are permits for X units of carbon (and scientists are convinced that's the right number) and one big company is emitting all X it's not really a problem. They would have had to buy the permits from other companies who decided it was a better decision for them to invest in reducing. It's difficult to explain but if you want proof you'd find The Coase Theorem interesting for why allocation of rights doesn't matter (so long as one party is allocated rights) but the market solution will be efficient no matter what.
Imagine there are 100 companies that each get permits for 1 unit of carbon. 99 all make some really tiny high-tech things that for whatever reason lends itself well to converting to solar energy so they all do it. They only work one shift so they can do all their manufacturing in the daylight. Now the 100th company makes something that's very valuable to society but the only feasible way of making it is with fossil fuels, it's inherent to the process because they're making steal or something. They can reduce their emissions some with scrubbers but they still need 99 more permits but they can afford this and based on how much people are willing to pay for their steal it's better for them to emit (because they can afford to buy their permits in order to make their product). So the company buys their permits and business continues.
If you had a command and control example where the government said "no company can produce more than 1 unit of carbon" the company making steal would shut down and the 99 tech companies wouldn't bother switching to solar because there's no incentive for them to go below that threshold.
It was an agreement in Kyoto that's the basis for running international negotions for climate change. What I was talking about is the biggest example of international offsets. I think it's problematic because of the scale but my real point in bringing it up is that it's important to consider the timeframe in which things are oriented when talking offsets. In the Kyoto protocol theoretically these development mechanisms count as the country that paid for them being carbon neutral indefinitely when in reality they are not. Most proposed cap-and-trade policies talked about in the US are on an annual basis, so you buy the right to emit until next year, at which point, presumably, the price for a permit will go up. The other problem is it's an international agreement so developed countries can just opt-out or have non-binding agreements (ie US and China).
Jaxon Gomez
contd
I'm not positive about which states the power company in Burlington are selling their power to, but I'd assume that it's an inter-state law (maybe Mass) and on the surface it's stupid because all the power is in the grid. Burlington also pays Quebec for some hydropower, it's from a grid so there's no way of saying what the actual source is; it's just a grid. But on paper it's from a hydroelectric dam. What matters is that buy forcing someone (in this case a municipality, in other cases a factory or whatever) to pay for offsets you're incentivizing them to come up with their own solutions for reduction while at the same time rewarding someone who has done so.
I don't usually think of it as 0 but as some level of emissions that's acceptable: ie scientists don't think it will bring about disastrous consequences. But yeah it's the sum that's important.
Dead right.
I think there are different ways people think they should be distributed in the first place. Some people think they should all be given to individuals, some say to companies. It's a valid question but something that hasn't become a problem yet. For now it's mostly amongst utility companies, who seem to do an ok job negotiating.
The other argument people make for cap/trade rather than taxes (both market solutions that would theoretically lead to the same equilibrium in many instances) is that we don't know the flexibility of demand for emissions. So a tax set too high or low might stifle the economy or not lead to enough reduction. With a cap you're setting the amount, so you can more deliberately target a carbon emissions limit.
Bentley Hall
Thanks for the thoughtful reply user!
I don't know if I'd say there's no room for innovation. I mean, even if I were the gov saying: "you must make coal scrubbers with X clean factor!" there would still be competition from companies trying to get and sell X+1 clean factor wouldn't there be? I guess they'd have to all be coal scrubbers and in that sense 0 innovation. But I would think that research on other ideas might still be ongoing. Bringing it back from theory to reality, isn't this kind of what they do with the offsets in a way? The site I was reading about offsets specifically funded projects that had to meet a criteria which included that it had to a be project which, without offsets/credits financing it, would not be possible. Which sounds somewhat similar to me as what you're saying. Still, if you were to shut down companies that were polluting, then wouldn't their employees need to go to the renewable-focused companies for work? And those companies would be hiring to try to make up for the output lost from the dirty company going out of business? I'm not advocating for a bludgeony act like that, but just trying to guage merits for each system now.
Your example makes sense in the case you've described, -99 from clean companies +99 from the dirty one = 0 (carbon neutral). But for some reason I have to doubt that it translates into reality well. For example, if you have 99 clean companies, but then the one dirty drops all it's waste into the drinking water of the population? Then the affect is very concentrated on one area. So if that kept up over the years, wouldn't you end up with big dirty company destroying local environment after local environment as it moved to new areas to suck up supply? Like say, a coal company mining and leaving behind exhausted mines? Or fracking/oil pumps that could spill / cause other damage. When I look at it like that, it's no longer a numbers game because it doesn't matter if 99 companies are clean if the space they have to occupy is reduced by 1 each time, because then you have a shrinking space for everyone to live in. Do you understand what I'm saying? I don't know if a market could correct for that situation… regulation I guess?
What if the incentive was reducing the allowed unit of carbon? My understanding of the paris talks and whatnot is that basically everyone's trying to lower the amount over time. So it's basically saying you produce 10 now, try for 8 in 3 years. That seems similar to your example, and the incentive I guess would be to not lose your company to fines from the gov… though maybe there'd have to be some type of union of companies or something to prevent unreasonable regulation?
Right. This just sounds like exploitation to me. Of the big nations vs those they can build/fund sustainable projects in. Having an annual re-assessment makes sense. Kinda reminds me of interest rates and how the fed contemplates raising them every month and never fucking does because Yellen has no balls
Camden Harris
(cont.d)
A smart grid! Anyway, I hope you read that article, it is interesting. But if I look at it timewise and whatnot it's… less great. I mean, it took decades to get to this point for the city. And it takes 3 different sources of energy + credits + selling offsets to be considered 100% sustainable, it doesn't seem like something that every city could ever do. In which case, it seems like eventually we'll have rich clean cities and poor dirty cities across the nation. Where the sustainable places attract tourists, build up and out, and the dirty areas with pollution employ workers who work in poor conditions and suffer health problems and all that… I guess I'm just envisioning a bit of dystopia.. ahem. What do you think?
Did you ever hear about the gamification of China? If you search that on youtube you should find a game theory video on it I think. Long story short, China incentized being a "good citizen" through social networks + pressuring + real effects and cracking down on nails that stick out. I could easily see this system of your personal carbon offset being used as a guilting and shaming mechanism, not to mention a taxing mechanism. Imagine if the government began taxing people for their carbon footprint? I guess if I think about it I can see a lot of ways these types of things could go horribly horribly wrong. Hopefully it's just my imagination.
I think this is one of the things I'm sitting on my couch here trying to figure out and not really having any luck with. The gov/fed/regulatory bodies have a hard enough time as is trying to set taxes and other things, I can't imagine them getting this type of thing right either.. pessimistic about government processes I guess.
Evan Ward
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Easton Turner
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Matthew Stewart
Anyone still here?
Easton Williams
I'm here
I just had a travel day for thanksgiving today and didn't have time to read/think about everything you said and write a reply. I will by tomorrow evening though. I just couldn't give the deserved response at the moment.
Juan Phillips
is that semon demon who I think it is?
Andrew Harris
They weren't invented as a scam, but they are being used to scam.
A company deals with pollution in four ways: 1. Pollute and hope no one catches you or fines you, Biggest Profit 2. Pay fines to pollute, small profit. 3. Buy credits to pollute, big profit. 4. Don't pollute, spend for recycling, lose profit.
If you read about the actual case studies, you hear of companies that buy credits off a company that simply goes to peoples farms and chops down huge ancient trees for firewood claiming it is a green alternative to fossil fuels. Ie. Deforestation is green… Thanks carbon credits >:(
Camden James
looking forward to it user.
yes!
do you have links to some case studies? would love to read them
Nathan Collins
Bumping because I want to know what that one user said and don't want the thread to die while I do so
Jordan Walker
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Grayson Ward
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Jeremiah Campbell
My company produces hand woven hemp baskets for faggots. I produce no carbons. I sell carbon credits to Apple, who uses them to continue burning human corpses to fuel their giant factory that has poisoned the entire country of china with black smog. Fuck Muh shitty baskets. I'm rich by having a fake bullshit company that sells a nonexistent product to polluters so they can continue to pollute unabated.
Justin Parker
they burn co2
Jonathan Myers
uhm. wat
Jason Wright
Global warming is due to electro magnetic radiation from energy production. It has nothing to do with your stupid car. The ocean acts like a huge heat sink and releases more carbon dioxide as a response because its solid at the bottom of the sea and sensitive to changes in temperature.
Fucking fuck I fucking hate this stupid science pop garbage
Jaxson Wilson
Here is a graph of the amount of energy production by the world as reported. It's probably a bunch higher.
Bentley Sanchez
So the sum of our total output is ~55000 Twh per year. Lets assume that its not 100% efficient and it has a radiation which is pretty much guaranteed. If you calculate the amount of energy it takes to increase 1 cubic cm of water by one degree and factor that into the total area of the atmosphere you'd see that there's a total increase of about 5-6 degrees at 100% non efficiency. You can drop it from there and assume the increase in carbon is to compensate the increase in radioactivity.
Oliver Powell
Carbon foot print is fucking laughable. You are all a bunch of a fucking idiots. Make me a pyramid or something or at least a gift basket.
This planet is fucking stupid.
Joseph Brown
did you faggots even read the thread
Jaxon Bell
post on pol and label it as anti jew mental effort
problem will get solved in nanoseconds
Jose Young
Why does carbon foot printing exist you fucktard??
