Talk:Carbon offset

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Stupid treehuggers with too much money on their hands. Wanna lower your emissions? Give me money ...forever. If the amount equals or surpasses my income, I'll quit my job, no longer commute, and the vast majority of my driving will stop, thereby preventing a whole lot of CO2 from exacerbating climate change. If you don't pay me, you're killing the planet!

But seriously, years ago when I first heard about carbon offset schemes plans, it immediately occurred to me that a smarter way to implement this in a way that would truly help people would be to find some low income folks who, despite financial concerns, own their homes and aren't leaving anytime soon, and live in an area powered by coal for now and the foreseeable future, and pay for an energy audit possibly followed by installation of rooftop photovoltaics. That'll save them quite a bit per month and reduce their emissions by a sizable amount, even taking into account the rebound effect and Jevon's Paradox. Do it over and over again for lots of homes and the environmentally concerned people with way too much disposable income will have their indulgences, but also actually be helping people in a real way. Because of course given that all the emission savings that could ever come from any personal implementation are so inconsequential, it might as well be done in a way that helps as side-affect.

My searches about this have been a bit lazy. Has there ever been a company or organization that's tried to implement offsets this way, or is it all about planting trees in the middle of nowhere? ^{— Unsigned, by: 70.194.106.175 / talk / contribs} 02:34, 09 September 2014 (UTC)

There was an interesting publication in Nature in the end of 2021 underlining the poor results of tree planting as a mitigation against climate change and biodiversity collapse. Planting a tree is useless if it's not the right type or tree at the right place, as the efforts should be concentrated to repair the original rainforests instead of creating tree plantation fields. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00769-5 82.212.133.95 (talk)

The RW article (short though it is) is already critical of tree-planting as a strategy.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:54, 7 January 2022 (UTC)