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Is a carbon offset just a financial instrument that's supposed to be a promise that a third party will reduce carbon emissions by that amount but in practice doesn't mean anything?
It is the ultimate capitalist industry, billions of dollars predicated on the promise of not doing a thing you swear you totally would've done. It's like extortion but worse.
There's a program in germany where drivers of electric cars can sell their carbon offset, no such option however exists for not using a car and I think that's pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell
Wow. This comment just makes me realise that 'carbon offsets' are the modern equivalent of buying indulgences 500 years ago.
Probably rather tax you for not having a car
I mean, yeah, pretty much. The Federal Enviromental Agency cites that every car is subsidized by about 5000€ a year on average via costs that drivers don't have to pay. Basically if you don't have a car a good chunk of your taxes go to somebody else for having one
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Yes it's how apple, amazon, google, microsoft, major airlines, etc. get to boldly claim they're carbon neutral or on track for it
They'll throw cheap change at an offset company promising to protect land that had little to no threat against it in the first place, then saying they reduced the tonnes of CO2 that would've happened if every square inch of that land was wholly logged and harvested
A lot of the time these offset companies are carbon positive. Like, they'll pay a logging company to sign an optionally renewable contract agreeing they'll keep away from a particular forest for a year or some shit... so the logging company uses the money they got to expand operations somewhere else in that time
yup