• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I know you said you don’t want to watch videos where people explain the problems with carbon offsets while citing sources, but for those that do want to know, here’s another video: The Carbon Offset Problem - Wendover Productions

    There are little regulations surrounding who can sell offsets meaning many companies vastly overstate their offsets (typically the ones selling the cheapest offsets, which are typically the ones major corporations buy).

    Even legitimate companies can overestimate how much help they’re doing by accident. Say a company pays to plant an entire section of forest. It’s calculated that section of forest will absorb 10 tonnes of carbon over 20 years. Nice! A year later that section of forest is destroyed in a forest fire. Does the company that bought the offset need to pay to replant it? Nope! They still get to say they bought 10 tonnes of carbon offsetting even when that’s objectively wrong.

    The video I linked also talked about a company that tried to improve energy use in developing countries. Most places burn wood for cooking but often do it in open air. That’s really inefficient! So this company provided efficient wood ovens to these communities (by charging others for carbon offsets). They then calculated how much carbon they’ve reduced, only to find out that these ovens increased the amount of wood burned since the communities loved using them so much! However, once again everyone who bought the offset still gets to claim they reduced carbon!