I agree that some carbon offsets / credits are "high quality", i.e. represent actual, durable reductions in someone's emissions. They can help with the important projects you mention.
When the result is to durably sequester carbon from the atmosphere, I also agree that this is a good contribution toward net zero. I don't know anything about mangrove planting, but that sounds like it might fit. Certainly the Climeworks project someone mentioned elsewhere in this discussion fits.
The problem is with "avoided emissions" offsets. Suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop. That's a half solution, but it is often treated as a complete solution: X looks good because they bought an offset, and Y looks good because they're no longer emitting anything. That's the shell game.
Concretely, let's consider rainforest preservation. This is critically important, and plausibly (I don't actually know a lot about it) requires payments to relevant actors in places like Brazil. So yes, as a society, we need to come up with money for those payments. But we need to come up with that money in a way that doesn't let some other polluter permanently off the hook for their emissions. If an airline pays to protect some rainforest, says "hey look an offset", and declares victory, how will we ever address the airline's emissions? We've done some good in the short run (we accelerated the effort to preserve the rainforest), but then we arrive at a dead end.
Cap-and-trade systems avoid this problem, if all of the buyers and sellers of credits are part of the system, and the cap is gradually reduced to zero. But if a company says "my plan to reach net zero relies heavily on purchasing offsets", outside of a cap-and-trade system that eventually squeezes avoided-emissions offsets to zero, then we're back to the shell game.
I read the entire article and didn't really get it until I read this paragraph:
> The problem is with "avoided emissions" offsets. Suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop. That's a half solution, but it is often treated as a complete solution: X looks good because they bought an offset, and Y looks good because they're no longer emitting anything. That's the shell game.
Incredibly well put.
So, effectively, one actor's emissions can be made to count for twice its effect through the accounting trick that involves one actor paying the other for having reduced their emissions.
However -- is this really a bad thing? Sure, it's not the full solution, but it's effectively a privately sponsored economic bonus for those actors that do choose to reduce their emissions.
Sure, it should probably be rebranded so it's clear this is actually what happens. "Carbon-reduction contingent donation" or something.
Is there a moral question here about whether some things, like
responsibility, are intrinsically "non-transferable"?
When thinking of simple goods or services it seems fine that I can buy
a car and then sell it. That's part of property rights.
For other things like a medical prescription, driving license or
degree certificate it seems correct that these things are somehow tied
to an individual.
Capitalism has evolved to allow transfer of many non-tangibles.
Financialisation is really the ability to trade companies, and more
importantly "titles and rights". Eventually this has extended to
buying and selling debts. Through this mechanism we've accepted, in
the limit, the trading of responsibility.
Yet there are already obvious limits to this. If I murder a man I
cannot sell that burden by contract, such that if I'm convicted
another will go to prison in my stead.[1]
These carbon trades feel a little bit more like this last case than
selling a car. Should one get to commit a tangible harm and then
offload the responsibility? [2]
[1] actually I think this may have been historically possible in some
cultures.
[2] This is a Kantian question - because clearly under Utilitarian
analysis I can simply claim a "greater good is served".
It's an interesting question but I don't think it applies here.
The problem with carbon offsets is not some moral question about my offloading my guilt to another party. The problem is that there's double-counting. Going back to the scenario, "suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop". Let's break that down:
1. Initially, X is emitting greenhouse gases. I'm not sure moral terminology is helpful here, but for the sake of discussion, we can say X is "guilty".
2. Initially, Y is also emitting greenhouse gases, they are also "guilty".
3. X makes a payment to Y, and Y halts their emissions.
If we say that Y is no longer guilty, because they stopped emitting, then we must say that X is still guilty.
If we say that X is no longer guilty, because they purchased an offset from Y, then we must say that Y is still guilty: they started out guilty, and they sold off the rights to their compensating action (halting emissions) to X.
We started with two guilty parties, and only one compensating / atoning action was performed. There is no coherent framework in which it can be said that both parties are now innocent.
This is the stronger argument. It's more complete. Thank you for
explaining. I think we don't disagree and that you recognise my
"non-transferability of guilt" in your step 4. Anyway the double
accounting makes a clearer case.
I read your post again but I don’t see what is not fair. If you look at the target sites for carbon credits, many are reforestation projects in the developing world. Is the concern that it is reducing industrial capacity there? Or, if it is paying another company to subsidize efficiency, is the concern that the money is staying among the rich? Or is it a “they have sinned and you can’t pay off sin?” Im assuming not.
I see this as “I made a mess in the street and I hired cleaners to clean it up.” Sure, I didn’t do the cleaning myself, but I’m still being responsible for it, right?
> Or is it a “they have sinned and you can’t pay off sin?”
Interesting. Yes, this is the closest of your choices. Not quite
Biblical Sin :), but that will do for the moment.
Please note that I asked a genuine, good-faith moral question. I'm
not making an assertion here.
I removed a remark that "perceived fairness is often more important in
human-centred affairs than summative outcomes" - but then noticed
that you teach human centred design and obviously get that. So let's
explore it together.
> many are reforestation projects in the developing world.
Regardless of how "good" the purchased offset is, it does not impact
the Kantian moral argument - in particular I am thinking about
universalisabilty. I don't think it matters whether one bribes the rich
or poor in this case. the question is about the ethics of transferable
responsibility - for which I used the obviously extreme edge case of
buying immunity from murder charges.
> I see this as "I made a mess in the street and I hired cleaners to
clean it up." Sure, I didn't do the cleaning myself, but I’m still
being responsible for it, right?
No, I think that's where I would differ. Let's say you made the mess
the next day, and the next, and the one after... and each day you pay
someone to clean it up. You're not off the hook. Somewhat like the
broken window fallacy, you're still creating a net loss to society.
Unless you think those cleaners have nothing better to do with their
lives than labour cleaning up your mess.
Let's consider another slightly more ordinary place this logic
operates and fails. Parking or speeding fines. Why do we have motoring
restrictions? Ultimately it's to reduce loss of life. Careless driving
or parking gets people killed. But paltry fines have no effect on
those who simply see it as an extra charge to be factored into being
an anti-social driver. Now suppose that instead I can simply pay
another driver to stay at home so I can speed around by the local
school and park across the hospital entrance.
Being "responsible for it" would be not making the mess in the first
place. You're "making amends for it" - those would be better words.
But if that delivers no deterrence from doing it again, a fundamental
aspect of justice necessary for regulating human affairs is not
served.
> Let's say you made the mess the next day, and the next, and the one after... and each day you pay someone to clean it up. You're not off the hook. Somewhat like the broken window fallacy, you're still creating a net loss to society. Unless you think those cleaners have nothing better to do with their lives than labour cleaning up your mess.
We do pay people to clean up our messes. There's entire industries of janitors, street sweepers, repairmen and garbage disposal. Which provides additional jobs, increases time for everyone else to do other things and increases the economic pie. Do carbon offsets work differently?
> it does not impact the Kantian moral argument
Do we care about some moral argument, or do we care about mitigating climate change?
That X has happened in the past is not a moral argument for X
> Do we care about some moral argument, or do we care about mitigating
climate change?
That's a false dichotomy since the two are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, we do care about some moral argument, and indeed all moral
arguments. They often get down to the root causes quicker than 5Y
analysis. For a gentle introduction to the intersection of ethics and
systems theory see [1].
>Somewhat like the broken window fallacy, you're still creating a net loss to society.
This an economic argument, not a moral one, and I think it's wrong. In theory.
Presumably, the idea is that if you can afford to pay to fix the mess, you have rendered sufficient credit to society to offset the loss caused by making the mess. And if we assume that both you and the mess-cleaner are rational agents, and you choose to pay somebody else to fix the mess instead of doing it yourself (or not making it in the first place), and they choose to take your money to clean it up instead of doing something else, then we must conclude that cleaning (or not making) the mess was not an efficient use of your time, and was an efficient use of theirs.
The reason this feels weird is because tons of people have way more money than they should, and others have way less than they should. Idealized capitalism breaks down in a world where rich people can sit back and watch money pour in for free from their "investments".
As you say yourself, there's no basis to the "assumption" of nice
rational actors in a zero sum game within in a singular homogeneous
society of little Bayesian utility maximisers - that's precisely the
simplistic fantasy that's landed us in this damn awful mess. Some
people get away with it. Some get screwed over. Hence I am questioning
such moral arithmetic.
I don’t think anyone thinks that offsets are the complete solution. Eventually we will have low carbon flight tech. A lot of money is being invested in developing this but it takes time to transition. Your argument seems to be based on the idea that because it doesn’t totally solve the problem then it is a scam. But if it contributes to the solution and buys time then what is the problem? It is all about buying time. Tech is rapidly advancing.
For instance, I was just in Dubai. Wow, that is an unsustainable city. Except that they are plowing wealth into solar. It is 13% solar powered today (plenty of sun in those parts) and will be 100% by 2050. That’s great. But the world needs time to transition. And if we can buy time by creating revenue streams for saving rainforest lands and mangrove forests and the like, that’s a win win. But it still isn’t enough without the tech.
And yes, sure, it would be great if no one drove cars or flew. But short of economic collapse, we need time to transition. What am i missing?
The energy grid is a prime example of why carbon offset do not work, and in some cases, actually create perverse incentives.
For the last decade or so the major strategy has been carbon neutral energy grid by using the logic that if the total exports of green energy surpasses the consumption of fossil fuel energy then the net sum is positive. The assumption is that the export will displace fossil fuel energy. The result is that under this plan fossil fuel plants can continue to operate since its more profitable to export green energy than shutting down fossil fuel plants, and since nations need large capacity in transitions lines to do exports they can also increase imports. More and longer life time of existing fossil fuel plants, and increased consumption of imported fossil fuel generated energy, while politicians can claim that the grid is green.
The strategy share much of the articles criticisms of carbon offset. The assumption that the exported energy will create avoided emissions is taken as a fact rather than a theory, with poor evaluation of the quality. If Everyone Did It, the strategy wouldn't work. Everyone can't just export massive amount of green energy while continuing burning more fossil fuels. Someone somewhere need to actually stop burning fossil fuel for emissions to go down. And like the article noticed, the market forces do not align to encourage people to stop emitting carbon.
I agree that the concept of "buying time" has merit. One good way to apply that would be a cap-and-trade system, with a gradually shrinking cap. Trading offsets within a cap-and-trade system avoids the criticisms I'm making.
But I see a lot of companies trumpeting use of offsets in the context of their own individual plan to achieve reduced or zero emissions. This is where the problems come in:
1. It is often presented as a a complete solution, rather than a helpful interim step. A company announces plans to offset their emissions, and then declares victory. But it is only a half victory; between the offset seller and the offset purchaser, only half of the total emissions have been addressed.
2. It removes the incentive to start developing solutions for the more difficult categories of emissions. It will take time to decarbonize, say, steel manufacturing. But we need to start developing pilot projects today. If the steel manufacturers can say "we're addressing climate change, we've purchased offsets", then no one is paying for those pilot projects.
i would assume offsets have to be purchased continuously - that is, you cannot purchase an offset once and be done with it forever.
I also assume that there's limited offsets that could be purchased, and it's not growing unless money is put into making more offsets possible (e.g., enlarging a rain forest, not merely protecting it).
This means every year, there would be more competition to purchase offsets from all participants, raising the price of offset. Eventually, the price would be high enough that it's more profitable just save emissions yourself - e.g, those pilot projects.
But if you predict this, you would start doing those pilot projects sooner, and beat your competition!
So why isn't this true today? The assumptions i made must be wrong - so which assumption is wrong?
This is why the banker-led accounting is important. So that credits are credited appropriately. Sequestering 1 ton at the cost of half a ton should be accounted as half. As I’m sure it will be as the market rationalizes.
You're missing... time. Like us all. The required transition requires time. But the kind of transition you mention is by far too slow to stop climate dereliction and loss of biodiversity.
In 2025, the amount of greenhouses emitted will get the world in the following years to +1.5ºC (when compared to 1750, before the industrialization).
We are already experiencing the effects of the climate dereliction, despite being around +1.25ºC (I'd need to chech that figure). Australia's current unknown floods will be followed by a summer of fires and temperature above 50ºC. The drought in the USA is alarming etc etc.
To avoid reaching +2ºC, the world would need the multiply the current transition trend by a factor... 33.
Above +2ºC, the climate will enter into self-reinforcing effects. The Amazon forest is on the verge of becoming an savanna: such a very large forest produce its own rain. By mid-april 2022, a larger surface of Amazon forest has been burnt than during 2021, the previous highest record.
The Covid and Putin's revolting invasion of Ukraine is masking a fundamental trend: the agricultural yields are already falling almost everywhere because of climate dereliction (about 20% less the recent years). That is the true reason for the huge inflation of food prices.
We just don't have the time for that kind of slow transition in the hope that some wonderful technical breakthrough will save us all.
I'm not the one saying that: just read the 111 page of the sum-up of the IPCC reports just published. Thousands of scientists have participated. Their climate model is now well tuned. The previous reports proved to be already reliable, and even by far too optimistic.
If you believe in Science, then you can't stay in the delusion that we are doing anything near what is necessary to tackle the issue.
Believing that Science and Technology will somehow provide the breakthroughs soon enough to stay under +2ºC is at best a convenient wishful thinking, but more likely magical thinking.
Why? Because the whole subject has been worked on by thousands of scientists in the past 40 years. One can not believe in Science only when it fits one's way of life.
"The future is already here, but not evenly distributed": The solutions exist. It has been shown that their costs to the world economic growth is far cheaper than the current quasi-inaction.
If we invest massively, we are quite capable of handling it. We don't need any breakthroughs. I'm optimistic that some will occur if we focus.
But the whole thing is classic game theory situation: everybody wins if everybody cooperates, but each country will be better off doing nothing while the others pay the cost of transition.
So we do nothing. At least nothing near the acceleration by a factor 33.
Don't trust me. Read the IPCC 111 pages and make your own opinion.
Sorry for the gloomy post. I can't help myself believing in Science.
> the agricultural yields are already falling almost everywhere because of climate dereliction
Sorry, but that's not necessarily true. Photosynthesis intensity increases with elevated CO2 [1] and decreases with higher temperatures. The exact effect of higher yields from more CO2, lower yields from temperatures, and increased arable land area from higher temperatures is not well known.
Agricultural yields depend on many more factors than just CO2 and temperature.
There's been a lot more extreme weather events - case in point : australia (recently floods - a lot of them, and the long term drought for over a decade). I'm sure similar stories could be seen in other parts of the world.
Yields are factually decreasing. As just mentioned, because natural disasters are broader, more intense and more frequent as the result of climate warming; that's why I pay attention to say "climate dereliction that the IPCC scientists prefer to "climate warming".
Furthermore, our pollution (plastic, pesticide s, fertilizers, synthetic materials of all kinds, oil spills, etc etc) is destroying the fertile soils, depleting them from its biodiversity. The ratio living creatures of all sizes per ounce of soil is decreasing. Intensive agriculture of cereals for example with Monsanto seeds and pesticides leads to a 80% loss of " life" inside the soil.
To make that worse, the climate warming destroys biodiversity because it rises far too fast for the Nature to adapt. A forest can move one meter per year in direction of the climate best adapted: the seeds on the less adapted climate die but the seeds on the better side grow. The natural climate cycles varies by a few degrees per 10 000 years (in a global average). The human impact will soon have risen the average temperature of 2ºC in 200 years.
Otherwise, yes, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is making the forests rise faster in many places. But it is far from compensating the emissions. And the huge fires in Australia, USA and Siberia, plus the going Amazon forest ecocide have emitted an immense tonnage of CO2.
I agree that some carbon offsets / credits are "high quality", i.e. represent actual, durable reductions in someone's emissions. They can help with the important projects you mention.
When the result is to durably sequester carbon from the atmosphere, I also agree that this is a good contribution toward net zero. I don't know anything about mangrove planting, but that sounds like it might fit. Certainly the Climeworks project someone mentioned elsewhere in this discussion fits.
The problem is with "avoided emissions" offsets. Suppose X and Y are both emitting greenhouse gases, and X pays Y to stop. That's a half solution, but it is often treated as a complete solution: X looks good because they bought an offset, and Y looks good because they're no longer emitting anything. That's the shell game.
Concretely, let's consider rainforest preservation. This is critically important, and plausibly (I don't actually know a lot about it) requires payments to relevant actors in places like Brazil. So yes, as a society, we need to come up with money for those payments. But we need to come up with that money in a way that doesn't let some other polluter permanently off the hook for their emissions. If an airline pays to protect some rainforest, says "hey look an offset", and declares victory, how will we ever address the airline's emissions? We've done some good in the short run (we accelerated the effort to preserve the rainforest), but then we arrive at a dead end.
Cap-and-trade systems avoid this problem, if all of the buyers and sellers of credits are part of the system, and the cap is gradually reduced to zero. But if a company says "my plan to reach net zero relies heavily on purchasing offsets", outside of a cap-and-trade system that eventually squeezes avoided-emissions offsets to zero, then we're back to the shell game.