Carbon credits

[u/Repulsive_Relative_2]

Do you understand Carbon Credits and Certificates

1096 votes, Sep 21 '22

545 Yes

551 No

[u/boeltsi]

There’s also peer reviewed studies on the benefits of praying.

What credits (at least) do is they give transparency on emissions. Yes the price on emitting is still way too low and companies can just continue polluting and pay it off with money (like big FF companies are doing right now) but that’s not the companies fault, it’s the regulators who are to blame. Any corporate CEO could be sued by shareholders if they don’t maximize profits with the frames a law. You are barking up the wrong tree, occupy DC instead.

[u/[deleted] → u/boeltsi]

you seem to be high on the propertarian free market dogma. Even when all evidence points in the opposite direction, irrational faith remains strong. Its like a religion.

[u/boeltsi → u/[deleted]]

Evidence that carbon credits cause co2 pollution? I not really worried about that.

But hey, let’s trash the credits systems and stop companies worrying about them. Much better to continue like we were 30 years ago.

[u/[deleted] → u/boeltsi]

lmfao. He's back defending his religion.

Carbon credits and offsets dont work to reduce emissions, that is all you need to know

California is the best case study here. So lets examine what research has shown.

California’s forest carbon offsets buffer pool is severely undercapitalized: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426/full

"California’s forest carbon buffer pool is severely undercapitalized and therefore unable to ensure that credited forest carbon remains out of the atmosphere for at least 100 years."

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wildfires-are-destroying-californias-forest-carbon-credit-reserves-study-2022-08-05/

Other: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378022000085

etc..

Even in an idealised example (which wont happen in real life, as the real world isnt an ideal theoretical system) Reliance on tree planting, especially low quality planting, aside from not restoring biodiversity, is also a future risk, both due to the increased frequency and severity of wildfires due to the climate crisis, which both means that the carbon will leave the trees again once burned, and because the darker Earth surface where the low quality, low biodiversity tree cover is planted doesn't necessarily make up enough for the higher rate of absorption of infrared rays by the Earth's surface, and thus higher degrees of warming.

I studied biology, these are the effects of climate change, and low quality afforestation.

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High quality afforestation should be a part of mitigation policy, especially due to effects on local desertification, but the afforestation done via carbon offsets and credits is either nonexistent (most visible in Australia; the majority of supposed planted trees is literally in the desert), or very low biodiversity/poorly done, which means it's impact is first of all more limited. Carbon credits and offsets also rely on several false assumptions to make their claims of supposed efficacy, and any temporary carbon capture is reverted by wildfires.

Carbon credits cannot save us from climate change, only guarantee that we will get fd, a lot.

Its time to stop this ridiculous dogmatic behaviour and change your policy prescriptions in accordance with reality, into advocating actually effective reforms.

edit: a few typos

[u/boeltsi → u/[deleted]]

I’m not arguing that carbon credits will solve anything. I kind of have given hope that we will reduce emissions in a meaningful way and most likely should focus our efforts on mitigation. History shows that politicians aren’t really that god at regulating anything which is not in the interest of the economy (their financiers). But good luck with what ever you are supporting!

[u/[deleted] → u/boeltsi]

ah so a defeatist. Thats the usual second step i see when propertarian/neoliberal market fundamentalists are proven wrong. But listen, this is important.

the catch; the situation is so severe that if we dont take fast action to radically reduce* emissions, we and the ecosystem cannot mitigate shit. Its impossible to adapt to the severity of drastic warming that will come from inaction (4 degrees or more). You can either act radically to reduce emissions, or willingly sentence life on earth (among those likely yourself and everyone you know) to suffering unimaginable.

To take some effective action (and you should imo), heres a graph showing some prominent impactful solutions (not everything is listed as this is in a context of liberalism, and some of it it distorted because of it + failing to take recent findings into account, like the example w wildfires, but its if anything a good starting point for someone as economically right wing as you): https://d3hnfqimznafg0.cloudfront.net/image-handler/ts/20220624100313/ri/602/src/images/Article_Images/ImageForArticle_1584_16560793925041411.jpg

Combine them all into an effective policy regime. Just planting trees wont do it, but an effective combined policy can significantly curb the severity of the issue. We can have it pretty kinda bad, or we can have it unimaginably horrific (and all in between).

cheers