For those that don't want to read the entire article: You can offset carbon emissions, e.g. pay 16 dollars CO2-compensation for your flight between Paris and New York 90% of this money is used to...
For those that don't want to read the entire article:
You can offset carbon emissions, e.g. pay 16 dollars CO2-compensation for your flight between Paris and New York
90% of this money is used to protect forests and/or slow down deforestation, rather than e.g. planting new trees.
According to a scientific paper in the peer-reviewed journal Science, the majority of the deforestation protection projects have failed anyways and have in fact had little to no impact on the speed of deforestation.
Planting new trees is not a panacea. The basic problem with this kind of "nature based" schemes is that you are offsetting something a flight that took you 12 hours for a land use change that has...
Planting new trees is not a panacea. The basic problem with this kind of "nature based" schemes is that you are offsetting something a flight that took you 12 hours for a land use change that has to last 10,000 years. Some people might tell you they planted trees but maybe they didn't or maybe they did plant them but they won't really grow or get cut down or burn, or...
you can measure the CO2 going into the ground the same way you measure natural gas going into your home. There are questions about how long it stays underground, but at least there is the possibility that the process can be complete on a time scale similar to the time it takes to release the CO2. There is also
which really traps CO2 in a place where it is less likely to get out than a forest but also takes years if not decades, is uncertain in its effects, and is hard to measure because it takes place over a large area.
Preserving forests is important but the mismatches involve make carbon credits a bad way to pay for it and will ensure that quality carbon credits never make it on to the market. Alternately, it is easy to say you want to "plant a trillion trees" but there are plenty of places where forest is not the climax state of the ecosystem and other forms of restoration are correct.
Planting new trees would be a better start than trying (and failing) to protect existing forests. Additionally, these trees could be cut in 10 or 30 years and the wood used for construction (e.g....
Planting new trees would be a better start than trying (and failing) to protect existing forests. Additionally, these trees could be cut in 10 or 30 years and the wood used for construction (e.g. as a replacement for a lot of concrete and brick-build houses). This way, the carbon is not only permanently captured, it also avoids emissions from other building materials (concrete is a big offender when it comes to emissions), it also creates room for a new tree.
The IPCC generally looks at the GWP of green house gasses at a term of 100 and 400 years. Still challenging periods for wood/trees, but not unrealistic either.
DAC has potential, but at the moment it is mainly used by fossil fuel companies (hi Shell!) as an excuse to keep polluting, rather than tackling emissions at the source. And most of the DAC projects are paid for by tax-payers, not by the fossil fuel companies.
Sounds about right. My understanding is you'd need to do a bunch of things to reduce deforestation. The main driver being greed, lack of protection over forested lands, and a high demand for new...
Sounds about right. My understanding is you'd need to do a bunch of things to reduce deforestation. The main driver being greed, lack of protection over forested lands, and a high demand for new agricultural land.
Improve food distribution channels
Try and steer the worlds population to a stable state. (Through access to birth control, healthcare, education, etc.)
Support farmers with high-yield GMOs and education about sustainable farming practices
Real protections and restrictions around forested lands.
But those are all pretty hard things to do, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
I think in many cases it boils down to economics and biology. The price for carbon doesn't reflect the cost of restoration projects - i.e. initial intervention or planting, maintenance needed on...
The main driver being greed, lack of protection over forested lands, and a high demand for new agricultural land.
I think in many cases it boils down to economics and biology. The price for carbon doesn't reflect the cost of restoration projects - i.e. initial intervention or planting, maintenance needed on site over a number of years, and tracking and verification of project success. I work in mapping and tracking and that cost alone for a multi acre site over a decade would be in the 10s-100s of thousands of dollars. Also biology doesn't work the was financial markets or assumptions do. There can be any number of factors that cause a restoration to fail or a protected area to decline in health: climate trends, drought, disease, infestation, etc. They are hard to control or account for so it makes selling credits on future success pretty risky. Also, many restoration - particularly those following deforestation - use highly productive clones to replant. This means biodiversity is reduced a huge amount and what you end up with is largely a timber farm. Many of the folks who are engaging in these projects aren't regional biological experts and the outcome they get are what you might expect.
Paying money to 'offset' something is the easy way for people/corporations with money to sooth their conscience and pretend they are doing something to help the environment in a world that thinks...
Paying money to 'offset' something is the easy way for people/corporations with money to sooth their conscience and pretend they are doing something to help the environment in a world that thinks that money solves everything.
What's NOT easy is the actual work of planting trees - so I'm all for allowing people to fly, even in their private jets, if they first are handed a spade and 25 saplings and then video themselves shoving that spade in the ground, planting the sampling, and putting a bit of water on it before they board their flight. Suddenly flights would be far less full, but the truly motivated would still be able to fly. And this 'carbon offset' bullshit would be over.
I see little difference between carbon offsets and giving money to an environmental charity. Carbon offsets can fund good environmental work, but you need to be skeptical. There are a lot of bad...
I see little difference between carbon offsets and giving money to an environmental charity. Carbon offsets can fund good environmental work, but you need to be skeptical. There are a lot of bad charities out there, and also a lot of bad carbon credit schemes.
It seems like deciding that all carbon offsets are bad is going too far, though? It would be like saying all charities are scams because the one you gave money to turned out to be a scam.
This is assuming people treat them as interchangeable. But carbon credits are definitely not at the point where you can treat them like a bank deposit. There shouldn't be a generic "carbon...
This is assuming people treat them as interchangeable. But carbon credits are definitely not at the point where you can treat them like a bank deposit. There shouldn't be a generic "carbon credit;" there should be many kinds and their prices should vary independently, just like a Google share isn't the same as a Microsoft share and they don't trade 1-to-1. Their prices should be "information-sensitive;" it matters which ones you buy, and if a carbon credit turns out to be a fraud then the price should go down a lot. (I guess that means they should be futures?)
A problem is that carbon emissions are interchangeable. Someone paid to make sure a certain forest didn't get cut down, and indeed it didn't get cut down, but some other forest did instead.
I think the only solution is to protect more forest.
It's not that hard to plant 25 trees, but it is hard to keep an area forested for 10,000 years which is the time that an increase of CO2 stays in the atmosphere. For that matter it is hard to make...
It's not that hard to plant 25 trees, but it is hard to keep an area forested for 10,000 years which is the time that an increase of CO2 stays in the atmosphere. For that matter it is hard to make sure that they really got started, that they really grew, that somebody didn't cut them down, that the forest didn't burn down, etc.
It's the later that makes it absurd that you can offset a 12 hour flight with land use changes that have to last longer than human civilization has so far.
I don't think a 10,000 year time horizon makes sense for this. We shouldn't care that much about the far future due to uncertainty; we have no idea what technologies will be available then. Maybe...
I don't think a 10,000 year time horizon makes sense for this. We shouldn't care that much about the far future due to uncertainty; we have no idea what technologies will be available then. Maybe they'll figure out cheap carbon removal?
So there should be a discount rate. Delaying emissions for 20 years has value, and then maybe someone can figure out how to delay them another 20 years?
Hypothetically, it'd probably be more cost effective to have a system where you can offset your carbon footprint by adding to a fund to pay for contract killers to take out the heads of the...
Hypothetically, it'd probably be more cost effective to have a system where you can offset your carbon footprint by adding to a fund to pay for contract killers to take out the heads of the logging companies. I remember years ago reafing an article about Brazil where it could cost as little as $50 to put a hit on someone. I imagine these heads of the logging industry would be difficult to be got at but if the fee is continuously accruing then eventually it will attract the necessary talent.
If it eventually becomes known that felling trees attracts the interests of a growing fund for turning you into fertiliser then i'd wager the practice would slow down.
Whoa whoa whoa, pump the breaks there, John Wick. I'm given to understand that a lot of the deforestation is happening due to slash and burn clearance for agriculture, and that primarily by...
Whoa whoa whoa, pump the breaks there, John Wick.
I'm given to understand that a lot of the deforestation is happening due to slash and burn clearance for agriculture, and that primarily by smaller, independent farmers. Even if your scheme weren't batshit, it would be targeting mostly the wrong people. You'd have to go after poor agriculturalists in developing nations–you know, historically the most privileged among us. (In case your antenna is broken, that was sarcasm.)
Doesn't seem like such a wacky-fun suggestion to me.
I think the sad state of the world is that we're increasingly being faced with options like this HAVING to be floated due to the power structures of world governments ignoring the very real threat...
I think the sad state of the world is that we're increasingly being faced with options like this HAVING to be floated due to the power structures of world governments ignoring the very real threat of climate change.
When you look at it, people are presently dying of climate change. The Maui fire, heat stroke deaths, people dying in flooding, biodiversity collapse.... I could go on ad infinitum. They were all just people trying to live their lives. And that's not even mentioning the global systems of exploitation as a result of consumerism. People are presently getting slaughtered and oppressed by the system as is.
Do their lives matter more or less than the people causing climate change?
Do you think there is a true difference between execution via an eco-fascist's rifle, or dying to wildfire/flood/ice-storm/heat-stroke?
I'd love for their to be this nice, ethical solution that fixes everything, I'd love for every single person on this planet to live their lives to the most full and pleasant and beautiful that they could ever be. That's not how it works, and it truly cannot be done.
What would be an "ethical" way to even stop deforestation? We'd have to give farmers in Brazil livelihoods, food, resources, and proper education. We can't even do that for citizens in 1st world countries. The cost would be immense, would require thousands of American Dollars, require extensive supply chains, political discussion....
As Hamartia points out, it could be stopped much cheaper with bounties. We could probably get a go-fund-me going this afternoon if we just gave into the darkness.
At the end of the day, we're kind of screwed, and difficult ethical questions like this are starting to come up. This is the fun result of capitalism.
Even ignoring the moral implications of the post, which is just so unhinged that I don't think I need to even reply for most people to realize how dumb it is, killing people will not stop...
Even ignoring the moral implications of the post, which is just so unhinged that I don't think I need to even reply for most people to realize how dumb it is, killing people will not stop deforestation.
Life isn't like a captain planet episode where there's one big bad deforestation guy that's responsible for killing the amazon because he hates nature.
The amazon is being decimated primarily by poor farmers who are looking for fertile land to make a living on. They're not wealthy people, and they're trying to find a way to survive economically in the only way they know how. Brazil just came off of a conservative government who eased those restrictions because such a policy move is incredibly popular with those people.
Imagine if the Amazon was in the US, it took up 2/3rd of our landmass, our GDP per capita was 1/10th what is is today, and income inequality was way worse than it is. You have a chance to at least scrape by by clearing a few acres of forest, but what you view as foreigners are telling you that you can't, because despite it being in your country, you have a responsibility to the whole world to not use it. That would be like the global community, people who don't even live in your country saying "Yeah we know the entire Midwest is full of fertile land, but you're only allowed to farm on the coasts. Sorry. We like the american prairies too much" You can start to understand why you may not view such an opinions so highly.
I'm not saying it's right, but that deforestation, like most problems in the world, aren't caused by mustache twirling villains, at least not primarily. It's caused by shortsighted policies and people looking out for their own interests.
"I'm not saying it's right, but that deforestation, like most problems in the world, aren't caused by mustache twirling villains, at least not primarily. It's caused by shortsighted policies and...
"I'm not saying it's right, but that deforestation, like most problems in the world, aren't caused by mustache twirling villains, at least not primarily. It's caused by shortsighted policies and people looking out for their own interests."
You just managed to both describe and ignore the banality of evil. That's an issue here with your line of thinking, and you really seem to have misunderstood my post.
I'm not saying that deforestation is caused by villainous people. The issue is, a global problem is being caused by people, and there seems to be no way of stopping it in the existing systems and policies. If the political systems are fundamentally incapable of stopping a global problem, what's the point of them? If our governments let us die (as they are doing) due to climate catastrophes, then the social contract is already broken.
Of course it's mostly poor people are trying to eek out a living with the means at hand. That's not the point of contention... the point is, how on earth do we stop climate change, a globe spanning crisis that's killing people now! I see no suggestions of alternatives in your post.
Liberalism created this big distinction between actively causing harm, and passively causing harm, and so many people want to fall back on the idea that if they do nothing, they are not a part of the problem. That's not true though. Every time you or I order something on Amazon, (the irony!) or drive a gas powered car, we're making the world slightly worse. I could not change that without serious modifications to my life that are fundamentally and utterly impractical. In addition, even if I were to do so, the combined weight of massive corporations and the rest of the planet would make my efforts moot.
I do not think that we need to start killing random farmers in the Amazon. I don't think it would solve anything. I am saying that I emphasize with the anger and helplessness that would lead a person to feel that killing in the name of the environment is a correct solution. (i.e. ecofascism) Additionally, if the current plan, as the article talks about, is failing, than I additionally see why people would be willing to try other solutions, even morally depraved ones.
Additionally, there's the very uncomfortable question of whether or not these ideas are being entertained, whether we like it or not. I personally did not consent to the drone strikes in the middle east, but they happened anyway in the name of democracy. I don't think the majority of Americans really consented to any war in recent memory. So maybe in 10 years, we could see drones doing the same in Brazil because we didn't figure out the good solution to climate change now. If you need an "ethical" distinction between the two, then I don't know what to say.
Furthermore, I find it uncomfortable that so many people are so uncomfortable with the idea of violence that one can't even make a comment expressing any favorability towards it, even in sarcasm or satire. There is a time to hurt bad people. The best way to defeat Fascism will be violence, whether we like it or not.
Finally, Captain Planet was a TV show. It explicitly existed to sell hope and children's toys. It was produced as a project by a billionaire mogul Ted Turner, someone who has explicitly made comments about curbing human population. It is needless to even say that billionaires are unethical, and the things that they create often exist to further their views. To even reference captain planet in a discussion of environmentalism, is to take a children's work made with the politics of a billionaire in reference of your arguments. The fact that you reference me as someone who would need to hear "Life isn't like a captain planet episode where there's one big bad deforestation guy that's responsible for killing the amazon because he hates nature." means that you are buying into the ideas that the elites created in pop-culture for this express debate.
My apologies for any harshness, but you really seem to misunderstand my arguments as being in favour of violence, rather than in horror of the inevitabilities of it.
The modest proposal was wrapped in irony and based in an absurd plan that simply wouldn't have ever worked or been a plausible idea. Nobody was actually going to eat babies. This Is literally...
The modest proposal was wrapped in irony and based in an absurd plan that simply wouldn't have ever worked or been a plausible idea. Nobody was actually going to eat babies.
This
If it eventually becomes known that felling trees attracts the interests of a growing fund for turning you into fertiliser then i'd wager the practice would slow down.
Is literally terrorism, both realistic and likely to eventually occur the more posts like this normalize it.
Moreover, Swift ended it by making it clear he was writing metaphorically, and by giving an actual, actionable suggestion on how to tackle the problem he was addressing. @Hamartia's post is just...
Moreover, Swift ended it by making it clear he was writing metaphorically, and by giving an actual, actionable suggestion on how to tackle the problem he was addressing.
@Hamartia's post is just swirling the drain of Poe's Law.
I might suggest that it's a bit unfair trying to judge a comment satirising the crushing futility of much of the efforts to protect the rainforests on tildes against someone considered the...
I might suggest that it's a bit unfair trying to judge a comment satirising the crushing futility of much of the efforts to protect the rainforests on tildes against someone considered the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature. But here we are.
From within a gun-free western european society it's an absurd suggestion (I'd really hope so anyway). It is absurd. That's why I didn't put any effort into researching and working over the finer(?) details that seems to be discomforting some responders.
Also, It wouldn't be good satire if it didn't cut close to the bone. There's always going to be some people too upset with the idea of making gloves from the skin of babies to analyse beyond the absurdity of the suggestion.
*edit: transfemmewarmachine comes the closest to my actual perspective on the matter. To which I'd add in that the planet is way too overpopulated going into this looming climate crisis and that the world's clusterfuck of systems of power are currently incapable of working together to save us all because for most of them their primary purpose is pandering to their elites.
My problem isn't so much that your comment doesn't meet the standard of Jonathan Swift, it's that it isn't even satire. For something to be satirical it has to either explore a topic...
My problem isn't so much that your comment doesn't meet the standard of Jonathan Swift, it's that it isn't even satire.
For something to be satirical it has to either explore a topic metaphorically, or at least map the logical structure of a concept onto another to highlight the absurdity of the former. Satire also contains signposts to guide the reader to interpret its argument in the manner the author intends, which is generally to shake the reader out of unconsidered modes of thought and present them with a call to action.
Your comment did none of those things. At best it can be called ironic, and that in a manner reminiscent of the supposedly ironic musings of 4chan before the neckbeard fascist brigade took over and the masks came off.
You're entitled to your own interpretation of what satire currently is, though it strikes me as limited. It's ok to have your own preference or to not get someone else's effort. If we all had the...
You're entitled to your own interpretation of what satire currently is, though it strikes me as limited.
A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye—but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing.
Satire's job is to expose problems and contradictions, and it is not obligated to solve them.
It's ok to have your own preference or to not get someone else's effort. If we all had the same perspective on such things the world would be a much duller place.
I explained earlier: I also pointed to transfemmewarmachine's comment as capturing some of my exasperation: And that's kinda it. You can funnel every penny you earn from cradle to grave into a...
I explained earlier:
comment satirising the crushing futility of much of the efforts to protect the rainforests
I also pointed to transfemmewarmachine's comment as capturing some of my exasperation:
I think the sad state of the world is that we're increasingly being faced with options like this HAVING to be floated due to the power structures of world governments ignoring the very real threat of climate change.
When you look at it, people are presently dying of climate change. The Maui fire, heat stroke deaths, people dying in flooding, biodiversity collapse.... I could go on ad infinitum. They were all just people trying to live their lives. And that's not even mentioning the global systems of exploitation as a result of consumerism. People are presently getting slaughtered and oppressed by the system as is.
Do their lives matter more or less than the people causing climate change?
Do you think there is a true difference between execution via an eco-fascist's rifle, or dying to wildfire/flood/ice-storm/heat-stroke?
I'd love for their to be this nice, ethical solution that fixes everything, I'd love for every single person on this planet to live their lives to the most full and pleasant and beautiful that they could ever be. That's not how it works, and it truly cannot be done.
What would be an "ethical" way to even stop deforestation? We'd have to give farmers in Brazil livelihoods, food, resources, and proper education. We can't even do that for citizens in 1st world countries. The cost would be immense, would require thousands of American Dollars, require extensive supply chains, political discussion....
As Hamartia points out, it could be stopped much cheaper with bounties. We could probably get a go-fund-me going this afternoon if we just gave into the darkness.
At the end of the day, we're kind of screwed, and difficult ethical questions like this are starting to come up. This is the fun result of capitalism.
And that's kinda it. You can funnel every penny you earn from cradle to grave into a scheme that seemlingly protects a tiny fraction of the rainforest only for another populist like Jair Bolsonaro, or worse, to get voted in (because large belligerent aggregations of wealth can and will buy their way into power) and completely undoes your efforts.
Or through mindless consumption, looking at rainforests elsewhere, where too many munters continue to buy products with palm oil in it. So more untouched forest is felled for palm oil production.
There is nothing that you can do currently that will guarantee the survival of the rainforests. Nothing. Yet we are all hurtling towards an entinction level event for countless species. Isn't that something worth satirising. Isn't it worth highlighting how powerless we all are because of how fucked up the various systems of power are and how mindlessly people continue to consume.
I'm not upset at the content, but it wouldn't work. Logging is a lot like oil excavation in that the smaller the company, the more damaging the process usually is. What tends to happen is X...
adding to a fund to pay for contract killers to take out the heads of the logging companies.
I'm not upset at the content, but it wouldn't work. Logging is a lot like oil excavation in that the smaller the company, the more damaging the process usually is. What tends to happen is X company gets the bid for a parcel of land - usually federally or state owned - and the clearcuts select sections of the area. In a well run system they need to adhere to the regulations that oversee the land, things like how much they can cut within an area, what age wood, what species, reporting endangered species... things like that. If you're a larger organization it's in your best interest to adhere to these regulations as you plan to win a number of permits from this oversight committee in the future. However if you're a smaller organization, or worse a one and done operation, staying within the regulations means less. However when we have regulatory capture - i.e. the logging corps drafting legislation for the regulatory bodies - then we have the outcomes we see today. So killing the heads of the logging companies would exacerbate the issue while regaining control of the regulatory process would actually have a pretty sizable impact.
If you are interested in the history of logging and how we got to where we are now - along with a great modern story - I'd suggest checking out The Golden Spruce. It gives a really nice oversight on the development of the logging industry and some insight on its workings today. I think you would really identify with the main character of the second half.
Yeah.... you've got a pretty huge misunderstanding of the situation. Also, for future's sake "lets kill people" rarely solves large, systemic problems. Forests aren't being clear cut for lumber....
Yeah.... you've got a pretty huge misunderstanding of the situation. Also, for future's sake "lets kill people" rarely solves large, systemic problems.
Forests aren't being clear cut for lumber. It's not a very effective way of getting lumber, there would be obvious huge political, financial, and logistic issues involved if logging companies constantly went to forests, clear cut them, then moved their entire operations to new forest.
Logging is primarily done on huge swathes of land owned by lumber companies. They cut down a bunch of trees in an area, reseed it with fast maturing species like Loblolly pine, move on to a new area, and so on until they come back to the original area in 15-20 years when the trees they seeded are mature to start the whole process again. This method is way cheaper and easier than constantly finding new forests, buying logging rights on them, figuring out transportation and logistics to them, bribing politicians to let you log there, etc.
Deforestation is primarily driven by agriculture and development. Developers and farmers need space, a lot of space, and many times there are trees on that space, so they clearcut it. Sometimes they sell the felled trees to lumber companies, but that's a side effect, not the primary motivation. Other times they will just straight up burn those trees.
The issue is, of course, we need more housing, and we need more agricultural space, which is very limited. Developers like cheap land, and cheap land tends to be where no one lives, and no one lives in forests. Same goes for agriculture, which also faces the additional hurdle of requiring cheap, fertile land, which barely even exists anymore.
These aren't all massive companies doing this either. In Brazil, the amazon is being decimated primarily by small, independent farmers trying to eke out a living for themselves.
So you'd have to kill a lot of people to solve the problem as it currently stands, and before long, new people would step in to take their place and do exactly what they were doing, because the economic incentives to do so are so strong.
Like most things, if it were a problem that was as easy as you're making it out to be to solve, it would have been solved already.
For those that don't want to read the entire article:
Planting new trees is not a panacea. The basic problem with this kind of "nature based" schemes is that you are offsetting something a flight that took you 12 hours for a land use change that has to last 10,000 years. Some people might tell you they planted trees but maybe they didn't or maybe they did plant them but they won't really grow or get cut down or burn, or...
With Direct Air Capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_air_capture
you can measure the CO2 going into the ground the same way you measure natural gas going into your home. There are questions about how long it stays underground, but at least there is the possibility that the process can be complete on a time scale similar to the time it takes to release the CO2. There is also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering
which really traps CO2 in a place where it is less likely to get out than a forest but also takes years if not decades, is uncertain in its effects, and is hard to measure because it takes place over a large area.
Preserving forests is important but the mismatches involve make carbon credits a bad way to pay for it and will ensure that quality carbon credits never make it on to the market. Alternately, it is easy to say you want to "plant a trillion trees" but there are plenty of places where forest is not the climax state of the ecosystem and other forms of restoration are correct.
Planting new trees would be a better start than trying (and failing) to protect existing forests. Additionally, these trees could be cut in 10 or 30 years and the wood used for construction (e.g. as a replacement for a lot of concrete and brick-build houses). This way, the carbon is not only permanently captured, it also avoids emissions from other building materials (concrete is a big offender when it comes to emissions), it also creates room for a new tree.
The IPCC generally looks at the GWP of green house gasses at a term of 100 and 400 years. Still challenging periods for wood/trees, but not unrealistic either.
DAC has potential, but at the moment it is mainly used by fossil fuel companies (hi Shell!) as an excuse to keep polluting, rather than tackling emissions at the source. And most of the DAC projects are paid for by tax-payers, not by the fossil fuel companies.
Sounds about right. My understanding is you'd need to do a bunch of things to reduce deforestation. The main driver being greed, lack of protection over forested lands, and a high demand for new agricultural land.
But those are all pretty hard things to do, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
I think in many cases it boils down to economics and biology. The price for carbon doesn't reflect the cost of restoration projects - i.e. initial intervention or planting, maintenance needed on site over a number of years, and tracking and verification of project success. I work in mapping and tracking and that cost alone for a multi acre site over a decade would be in the 10s-100s of thousands of dollars. Also biology doesn't work the was financial markets or assumptions do. There can be any number of factors that cause a restoration to fail or a protected area to decline in health: climate trends, drought, disease, infestation, etc. They are hard to control or account for so it makes selling credits on future success pretty risky. Also, many restoration - particularly those following deforestation - use highly productive clones to replant. This means biodiversity is reduced a huge amount and what you end up with is largely a timber farm. Many of the folks who are engaging in these projects aren't regional biological experts and the outcome they get are what you might expect.
I think you're right that cultural change is hard, but I suspect it might be possible without all of those.
Paying money to 'offset' something is the easy way for people/corporations with money to sooth their conscience and pretend they are doing something to help the environment in a world that thinks that money solves everything.
What's NOT easy is the actual work of planting trees - so I'm all for allowing people to fly, even in their private jets, if they first are handed a spade and 25 saplings and then video themselves shoving that spade in the ground, planting the sampling, and putting a bit of water on it before they board their flight. Suddenly flights would be far less full, but the truly motivated would still be able to fly. And this 'carbon offset' bullshit would be over.
I see little difference between carbon offsets and giving money to an environmental charity. Carbon offsets can fund good environmental work, but you need to be skeptical. There are a lot of bad charities out there, and also a lot of bad carbon credit schemes.
It seems like deciding that all carbon offsets are bad is going too far, though? It would be like saying all charities are scams because the one you gave money to turned out to be a scam.
The thing is that bad carbon offsets at $20 a tonne will crowd out the market for good carbon offsets that cost more like $100 a tonne.
This is assuming people treat them as interchangeable. But carbon credits are definitely not at the point where you can treat them like a bank deposit. There shouldn't be a generic "carbon credit;" there should be many kinds and their prices should vary independently, just like a Google share isn't the same as a Microsoft share and they don't trade 1-to-1. Their prices should be "information-sensitive;" it matters which ones you buy, and if a carbon credit turns out to be a fraud then the price should go down a lot. (I guess that means they should be futures?)
A problem is that carbon emissions are interchangeable. Someone paid to make sure a certain forest didn't get cut down, and indeed it didn't get cut down, but some other forest did instead.
I think the only solution is to protect more forest.
It's not that hard to plant 25 trees, but it is hard to keep an area forested for 10,000 years which is the time that an increase of CO2 stays in the atmosphere. For that matter it is hard to make sure that they really got started, that they really grew, that somebody didn't cut them down, that the forest didn't burn down, etc.
It's the later that makes it absurd that you can offset a 12 hour flight with land use changes that have to last longer than human civilization has so far.
I don't think a 10,000 year time horizon makes sense for this. We shouldn't care that much about the far future due to uncertainty; we have no idea what technologies will be available then. Maybe they'll figure out cheap carbon removal?
So there should be a discount rate. Delaying emissions for 20 years has value, and then maybe someone can figure out how to delay them another 20 years?
Hypothetically, it'd probably be more cost effective to have a system where you can offset your carbon footprint by adding to a fund to pay for contract killers to take out the heads of the logging companies. I remember years ago reafing an article about Brazil where it could cost as little as $50 to put a hit on someone. I imagine these heads of the logging industry would be difficult to be got at but if the fee is continuously accruing then eventually it will attract the necessary talent.
If it eventually becomes known that felling trees attracts the interests of a growing fund for turning you into fertiliser then i'd wager the practice would slow down.
Whoa whoa whoa, pump the breaks there, John Wick.
I'm given to understand that a lot of the deforestation is happening due to slash and burn clearance for agriculture, and that primarily by smaller, independent farmers. Even if your scheme weren't batshit, it would be targeting mostly the wrong people. You'd have to go after poor agriculturalists in developing nations–you know, historically the most privileged among us. (In case your antenna is broken, that was sarcasm.)
Doesn't seem like such a wacky-fun suggestion to me.
Jesus Christ, you're brazenly talking about killing people.
I didn’t read it as serious. More of a well-written troll comment. But maybe I’m dumb.
Poe's Law applies.
I think the sad state of the world is that we're increasingly being faced with options like this HAVING to be floated due to the power structures of world governments ignoring the very real threat of climate change.
When you look at it, people are presently dying of climate change. The Maui fire, heat stroke deaths, people dying in flooding, biodiversity collapse.... I could go on ad infinitum. They were all just people trying to live their lives. And that's not even mentioning the global systems of exploitation as a result of consumerism. People are presently getting slaughtered and oppressed by the system as is.
Do their lives matter more or less than the people causing climate change?
Do you think there is a true difference between execution via an eco-fascist's rifle, or dying to wildfire/flood/ice-storm/heat-stroke?
I'd love for their to be this nice, ethical solution that fixes everything, I'd love for every single person on this planet to live their lives to the most full and pleasant and beautiful that they could ever be. That's not how it works, and it truly cannot be done.
What would be an "ethical" way to even stop deforestation? We'd have to give farmers in Brazil livelihoods, food, resources, and proper education. We can't even do that for citizens in 1st world countries. The cost would be immense, would require thousands of American Dollars, require extensive supply chains, political discussion....
As Hamartia points out, it could be stopped much cheaper with bounties. We could probably get a go-fund-me going this afternoon if we just gave into the darkness.
At the end of the day, we're kind of screwed, and difficult ethical questions like this are starting to come up. This is the fun result of capitalism.
Even ignoring the moral implications of the post, which is just so unhinged that I don't think I need to even reply for most people to realize how dumb it is, killing people will not stop deforestation.
Life isn't like a captain planet episode where there's one big bad deforestation guy that's responsible for killing the amazon because he hates nature.
The amazon is being decimated primarily by poor farmers who are looking for fertile land to make a living on. They're not wealthy people, and they're trying to find a way to survive economically in the only way they know how. Brazil just came off of a conservative government who eased those restrictions because such a policy move is incredibly popular with those people.
Imagine if the Amazon was in the US, it took up 2/3rd of our landmass, our GDP per capita was 1/10th what is is today, and income inequality was way worse than it is. You have a chance to at least scrape by by clearing a few acres of forest, but what you view as foreigners are telling you that you can't, because despite it being in your country, you have a responsibility to the whole world to not use it. That would be like the global community, people who don't even live in your country saying "Yeah we know the entire Midwest is full of fertile land, but you're only allowed to farm on the coasts. Sorry. We like the american prairies too much" You can start to understand why you may not view such an opinions so highly.
I'm not saying it's right, but that deforestation, like most problems in the world, aren't caused by mustache twirling villains, at least not primarily. It's caused by shortsighted policies and people looking out for their own interests.
"I'm not saying it's right, but that deforestation, like most problems in the world, aren't caused by mustache twirling villains, at least not primarily. It's caused by shortsighted policies and people looking out for their own interests."
You just managed to both describe and ignore the banality of evil. That's an issue here with your line of thinking, and you really seem to have misunderstood my post.
I'm not saying that deforestation is caused by villainous people. The issue is, a global problem is being caused by people, and there seems to be no way of stopping it in the existing systems and policies. If the political systems are fundamentally incapable of stopping a global problem, what's the point of them? If our governments let us die (as they are doing) due to climate catastrophes, then the social contract is already broken.
Of course it's mostly poor people are trying to eek out a living with the means at hand. That's not the point of contention... the point is, how on earth do we stop climate change, a globe spanning crisis that's killing people now! I see no suggestions of alternatives in your post.
Liberalism created this big distinction between actively causing harm, and passively causing harm, and so many people want to fall back on the idea that if they do nothing, they are not a part of the problem. That's not true though. Every time you or I order something on Amazon, (the irony!) or drive a gas powered car, we're making the world slightly worse. I could not change that without serious modifications to my life that are fundamentally and utterly impractical. In addition, even if I were to do so, the combined weight of massive corporations and the rest of the planet would make my efforts moot.
I do not think that we need to start killing random farmers in the Amazon. I don't think it would solve anything. I am saying that I emphasize with the anger and helplessness that would lead a person to feel that killing in the name of the environment is a correct solution. (i.e. ecofascism) Additionally, if the current plan, as the article talks about, is failing, than I additionally see why people would be willing to try other solutions, even morally depraved ones.
Additionally, there's the very uncomfortable question of whether or not these ideas are being entertained, whether we like it or not. I personally did not consent to the drone strikes in the middle east, but they happened anyway in the name of democracy. I don't think the majority of Americans really consented to any war in recent memory. So maybe in 10 years, we could see drones doing the same in Brazil because we didn't figure out the good solution to climate change now. If you need an "ethical" distinction between the two, then I don't know what to say.
Furthermore, I find it uncomfortable that so many people are so uncomfortable with the idea of violence that one can't even make a comment expressing any favorability towards it, even in sarcasm or satire. There is a time to hurt bad people. The best way to defeat Fascism will be violence, whether we like it or not.
Finally, Captain Planet was a TV show. It explicitly existed to sell hope and children's toys. It was produced as a project by a billionaire mogul Ted Turner, someone who has explicitly made comments about curbing human population. It is needless to even say that billionaires are unethical, and the things that they create often exist to further their views. To even reference captain planet in a discussion of environmentalism, is to take a children's work made with the politics of a billionaire in reference of your arguments. The fact that you reference me as someone who would need to hear "Life isn't like a captain planet episode where there's one big bad deforestation guy that's responsible for killing the amazon because he hates nature." means that you are buying into the ideas that the elites created in pop-culture for this express debate.
My apologies for any harshness, but you really seem to misunderstand my arguments as being in favour of violence, rather than in horror of the inevitabilities of it.
It'd be a lot fewer people than will die if deforestation continues. A pretty modest proposal, I'd call it
The modest proposal was wrapped in irony and based in an absurd plan that simply wouldn't have ever worked or been a plausible idea. Nobody was actually going to eat babies.
This
Is literally terrorism, both realistic and likely to eventually occur the more posts like this normalize it.
Moreover, Swift ended it by making it clear he was writing metaphorically, and by giving an actual, actionable suggestion on how to tackle the problem he was addressing.
@Hamartia's post is just swirling the drain of Poe's Law.
Edit: attributed to the wrong commenter, somehow.
I might suggest that it's a bit unfair trying to judge a comment satirising the crushing futility of much of the efforts to protect the rainforests on tildes against someone considered the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature. But here we are.
From within a gun-free western european society it's an absurd suggestion (I'd really hope so anyway). It is absurd. That's why I didn't put any effort into researching and working over the finer(?) details that seems to be discomforting some responders.
Also, It wouldn't be good satire if it didn't cut close to the bone. There's always going to be some people too upset with the idea of making gloves from the skin of babies to analyse beyond the absurdity of the suggestion.
*edit: transfemmewarmachine comes the closest to my actual perspective on the matter. To which I'd add in that the planet is way too overpopulated going into this looming climate crisis and that the world's clusterfuck of systems of power are currently incapable of working together to save us all because for most of them their primary purpose is pandering to their elites.
My problem isn't so much that your comment doesn't meet the standard of Jonathan Swift, it's that it isn't even satire.
For something to be satirical it has to either explore a topic metaphorically, or at least map the logical structure of a concept onto another to highlight the absurdity of the former. Satire also contains signposts to guide the reader to interpret its argument in the manner the author intends, which is generally to shake the reader out of unconsidered modes of thought and present them with a call to action.
Your comment did none of those things. At best it can be called ironic, and that in a manner reminiscent of the supposedly ironic musings of 4chan before the neckbeard fascist brigade took over and the masks came off.
You're entitled to your own interpretation of what satire currently is, though it strikes me as limited.
It's ok to have your own preference or to not get someone else's effort. If we all had the same perspective on such things the world would be a much duller place.
Yeah, it exposes problems and contradictions–so what problems does your comment expose? What logical absurdities does it bring attention to?
I explained earlier:
I also pointed to transfemmewarmachine's comment as capturing some of my exasperation:
And that's kinda it. You can funnel every penny you earn from cradle to grave into a scheme that seemlingly protects a tiny fraction of the rainforest only for another populist like Jair Bolsonaro, or worse, to get voted in (because large belligerent aggregations of wealth can and will buy their way into power) and completely undoes your efforts.
Or through mindless consumption, looking at rainforests elsewhere, where too many munters continue to buy products with palm oil in it. So more untouched forest is felled for palm oil production.
There is nothing that you can do currently that will guarantee the survival of the rainforests. Nothing. Yet we are all hurtling towards an entinction level event for countless species. Isn't that something worth satirising. Isn't it worth highlighting how powerless we all are because of how fucked up the various systems of power are and how mindlessly people continue to consume.
Isn't it all logically absurd!
Ergo: satire.
I'm not upset at the content, but it wouldn't work. Logging is a lot like oil excavation in that the smaller the company, the more damaging the process usually is. What tends to happen is X company gets the bid for a parcel of land - usually federally or state owned - and the clearcuts select sections of the area. In a well run system they need to adhere to the regulations that oversee the land, things like how much they can cut within an area, what age wood, what species, reporting endangered species... things like that. If you're a larger organization it's in your best interest to adhere to these regulations as you plan to win a number of permits from this oversight committee in the future. However if you're a smaller organization, or worse a one and done operation, staying within the regulations means less. However when we have regulatory capture - i.e. the logging corps drafting legislation for the regulatory bodies - then we have the outcomes we see today. So killing the heads of the logging companies would exacerbate the issue while regaining control of the regulatory process would actually have a pretty sizable impact.
If you are interested in the history of logging and how we got to where we are now - along with a great modern story - I'd suggest checking out The Golden Spruce. It gives a really nice oversight on the development of the logging industry and some insight on its workings today. I think you would really identify with the main character of the second half.
Yeah.... you've got a pretty huge misunderstanding of the situation. Also, for future's sake "lets kill people" rarely solves large, systemic problems.
Forests aren't being clear cut for lumber. It's not a very effective way of getting lumber, there would be obvious huge political, financial, and logistic issues involved if logging companies constantly went to forests, clear cut them, then moved their entire operations to new forest.
Logging is primarily done on huge swathes of land owned by lumber companies. They cut down a bunch of trees in an area, reseed it with fast maturing species like Loblolly pine, move on to a new area, and so on until they come back to the original area in 15-20 years when the trees they seeded are mature to start the whole process again. This method is way cheaper and easier than constantly finding new forests, buying logging rights on them, figuring out transportation and logistics to them, bribing politicians to let you log there, etc.
Deforestation is primarily driven by agriculture and development. Developers and farmers need space, a lot of space, and many times there are trees on that space, so they clearcut it. Sometimes they sell the felled trees to lumber companies, but that's a side effect, not the primary motivation. Other times they will just straight up burn those trees.
The issue is, of course, we need more housing, and we need more agricultural space, which is very limited. Developers like cheap land, and cheap land tends to be where no one lives, and no one lives in forests. Same goes for agriculture, which also faces the additional hurdle of requiring cheap, fertile land, which barely even exists anymore.
These aren't all massive companies doing this either. In Brazil, the amazon is being decimated primarily by small, independent farmers trying to eke out a living for themselves.
So you'd have to kill a lot of people to solve the problem as it currently stands, and before long, new people would step in to take their place and do exactly what they were doing, because the economic incentives to do so are so strong.
Like most things, if it were a problem that was as easy as you're making it out to be to solve, it would have been solved already.