Carbon offsets and the Nebula show "Jet Lag"
Recently I've been watching the show Jet Lag on Nebula. It's an entertaining little reality show where people compete in contests which require a lot of travel, especially in commercial aircraft.
I've noticed that they are really really traveling a lot for a frivolous reason and having a huge carbon footprint. (Yes I understand that the flights they go on are booked anyway and would fly if they weren't on them, sort of).
During the show they sometimes use a graphic to show the travel distance and then also mention that they are using Gold Standard carbon offsets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Standard_(carbon_offset_standard)
I've read a bit about carbon credits and carbon offsets before. I think it seems like a bit of a boondoggle to let people with money greenwash their activities. Has anyone here researched this and come up with a different conclusion?
I think maybe this is a very newbie question to ask on this Tildes group.
While carbon offsets can and have been used by many people to "buy out" of being more mindful of how their activities contribute to the worsening climate situatuin, in this specific case I tend to trust the Jet Lag guys a but more.
Here's a video by them going into detail about some of the problems with carbon offsets - https://youtube.com/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY
Because of this I believe they've done their research and are not just intending to greenwash their activities by putting up the carbon offset counter. And while I do agree that not emitting is infinitely better than trying to be "net zero" by buying offsets, this is not feasible in all cases (I mean they could just not.make the show, but at that point... you get the idea)
Funny coincidence, I just finished watching an unrelated video of theirs about California and the sponsor for that video was the company they use to buy their carbon offsets. They're called Wren, and Sam seems to really believe in their model. He says (as of April last year anyway) he uses them to purchase all of his personal and business offsets, which I would assume extends to Jet Lag as well.
Here's the sponsorship segment: https://youtu.be/1ngms6iRa14?t=1399
edit: I never thought I'd be linking to a video where the sponsorship would be the focus, lol. I usually have sponsorblock installed.
The principle of carbon offsets or carbon credits is correct - we all live on Earth, so changes in carbon emissions are fungible. It doesn’t matter who or where, it’s about if net amount of carbon in the atmosphere is going up or down.
The problem is mainly that it’s a poorly regulated and transparent industry, without good benchmarks for effectiveness and real value per dollar.
There’s a Tildes user that works for wren.co. Does anyone recall who it is?
You may be thinking about @tvl (per this comment, which I have just noticed is replying to you), though they haven’t been active here in a long time.
Carbon credits are kind of like recycling. At the level which most people engage in it, it makes no real difference to the environment, but it's still better to participate than to not.
Carbon credits have limited utility and are not a get-out-of-consequence free card for people who do a lot of travel, but calling them a boondoggle seems incorrect and cynical. They are an action that you can take that is limited but at least somewhat attempts to offset actions that can be harmful to the environment.
If you travel by plane and have the wherewithal to do so then purchasing carbon offsets is a good idea. It doesn't fix the fact that you took a plane, but it's better than not doing it. Similarly, if you use a resource that can be recycled it's better to recycle even though that doesn't fix the fact that you used the resource. It's better overall to just not travel, or not use things that get recycled - reduce, reuse, recycle is an ordered trio, by importance.
I would argue that like recycling it heavily depends on where and what. Recycling in the US is notoriously awful and mostly just gives a bunch of carbon spewing trucks a reason to drive around and throw garbage in carbon spewing equipment.
Aluminum and Tin are pretty easy to recycle with some sort of net positive, with most of the rest being questionable at best. Plastic at this point is notorious for basically having been a scam since it started in 90% of cases, even globally where most countries "recycled" it by shipping it to china.
Certain materials can be recycled efficiently on commercial basis, but plastic recycling is a scam invented by the plastics industry.
I have yet to see any implementation of carbon credits that goes beyond “well meaning failure”. And that’s being generous and assuming it’s not an out right scam.
It is conceptually flawed on so many levels but allows yet another feel good profit margin
I … don’t disagree per se, but there are definitely still projects that move the needle and are capital constrained. I just think there are obscenely large perverse incentives involved (ie without external accountability, carbon credit sellers are extremely incentivized to make up numbers that look good on paper).
The intervention that most readily comes to mind is diverting organics out of landfills and into compost (directly mitigates methane emissions). It can be done nearly anywhere that composting is possible (eg not parts of Alaska) to boot.
(edit) sorry that that statement is very citation-poor. I can try to dig something up if that’d be helpful.
No that's fine. I think we've roughly got the same knowledge of the situation and just different conclusions for the most part. I'm aware that things like ensuring organic composting instead of landfills is probably one of the best ways to do it, as opposed to say the "we'll plant mango tree's for you" thing that so often winds up, at best, as an abandoned dead plot of trees a year later.
I just don't see any realistic way to actually come anywhere close to the offset required by just the on books good faith attempts, let alone anywhere near some of the proposed potential. Even IF everyone was just acting in good faith, there doesn't seem to be a bunch of ways to realistically offset the carbon. I get that it can't solve the problem, but when you throw in the corruption/incompetence/failures of any system, I just don't see how it can ever seriously matter.
At least in the EU, there are two kinds of carbon offset programs:
One contains a shocking/sad amount of well, not necessarily garbage, but let’s say… weaker programs, whereas the other packs somewhat of a real punch (given its constraints – not better than just emitting less, but far better than doing nothing).
Take a guess which is which. Hint: compliance markets offsets may cost on the order of $2k per ton, and other programs more on the order of $2-$20. (Ballpark orders, obviously; and a disclaimer: I’d heard this from a business law professor of mine a while back and haven’t actually ever gone to verify these numbers).
And just to be clear: There is nothing wrong with reforestation and such programs for the most part; the issue is companies using them as a cheap cop-out to look good for acting “voluntarily” while not actually working on reducing their emissions… especially in jurisdictions where the compliance market side isn’t legally mandated.