[super-serial]

That's awesome - I would be one of the people who would pay $400 to be carbon neutral each year. You should think big and do a Kickstarter with $25 gifts up to $5k gifts...

For $400 I want a t-shirt that says "I'm carbon neutral. Do you have the rocks to become carbon neutral too?" with a pic of olivine rocks and your website url.

[realusername]

You can already compensate your Co2 online and it's not that expensive. Generally the companies are replacing very inefficient processes in developing countries.

[super-serial]

Part of it is I want to support promising geoengineering solutions because I don't think reducing emissions will be enough in the future. In particular spreading olivine on beaches also reduces ocean acidity and gives nutrients to the base of the ocean food chain.

Donating money so that polluting industries can pollute less seems like a bailout to those industries. They should be fined/regulated by their governments in those countries. If they get a bailout which gives them a competitive advantage (free money) what's stopping them from opening another low-tech, inefficient plant with the extra money, then expecting another bailout? It seems like rewarding bad behavior.

[realusername]

> Part of it is I want to support promising geoengineering solutions because I don't think reducing emissions will be enough in the future. In particular spreading olivine on beaches also reduces ocean acidity and gives nutrients to the base of the ocean food chain.

We can do both! No need to make a choice. The carbon offsetting schemes in the developing world are currently very cheap because we have all the low hanging fruits available at the moment. When all the very inefficient and easy to replace processes will be replaced, the offsetting schemes will be much more expensive than geoengineering solutions.

> Donating money so that polluting industries can pollute less seems like a bailout to those industries

It's not really how it works (at least not the companies I've looked at). The way it works is you have a more expensive and equivalent way to do things which at the end does release less carbon. It still works in a free market way. For example they engineered cooking stove which are much more efficient but slightly more expensive, they are subsidised by the Co2 offset donations.

[wardrobe]

Do you have any carbon offset schemes you recommend? I feel like there are a lot of BS offsets out there.

[zefool]

>Not OP, not my personal recommendation.

Giving What We Can has published an analysis on the topic. You can read it here when the site is up again (it is down for me right now): https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/research/causes/climate-chan...

Tl;dr: Cool Earth is their recommendation.

[0xfaded]

Just FYI, CO2 credits may not be removing CO2 from the atmosphere in the way you expect.

For example, since methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, one can generate CO2 credits by finding a natural methane leak and igniting it.

While yes, it needs to be done to reduce the greenhouse effect, this is just addressing one of the runaway effects. Removal and reduction technologies are needed to move our individual footprints towards zero.

[doon123]

You'll pay $400 to be carbon neutral!?

Why don't you just stop eating meat, stop driving, stop whatever else that you do and have a smaller carbon footprint naturally, instead of living a carbon lavish life and paying some money to be called carbon neutral.

Its like bribing your way out of jail after you have done the crime.

[EDIT]: removed expletives

[zeroname]

> Why don't you just stop eating meat, stop driving, stop whatever else that you do and have a smaller carbon footprint naturally, instead of living a carbon lavish life and paying some money to be called carbon neutral.

Why? Because I want to keep my standard of living, just like almost everyone else. What a silly question to even ask. Any solution that asks people to practice austerity is obviously doomed to fail. Any solution that leverages a human's self-interested (even if it's just vanity) at least has a chance.

> Its like bribing your way out of jail after you have done the crime.

It's more like when faced between the choice of paying a fine or going to jail, you pay the fine. That money can be put to work and that time can be put to use, but if you just sit in jail nobody benefits, it just costs the public money to keep you there.

Except of course in reality there is no crime here that anybody could get prosecuted for, and the real victims haven't even been born yet.

[prrls]

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

These things you classify as comfort may not be that essential and good for you and the others. Someone that eats animal products everyday and claims that it's their comfort, while it's affecting their health, the lives of 56 billion animals per year and the environment, is, to me, problematic.

I always, in my head, compare it to slavery. While it's not the same thing, of course, the pattern is the same. Something that's not ethical at all, but we, for a long time, did not care because of the comfort it brings us. Can we still live without it? Of course. And well.

I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time getting my point accross in these topics, but what I mean is that what you call "comfort" may not that critical to your well-being at all. You don't need to change eveything from day 1, but doing it a bit more everyday will make feel like a better human being, as you know you're living by respecting others and your environment, while giving money is kind of too easy and doesn't influence what's surrounding you. If you want things to change, you have to be this change. By being it you expose others to the issue you're fighting and make think about it in another way, up to a point they might understand it and join the fight, or at least acknowledge it. It's a very slow process but this is how sustainable change goes since the dawn of time. Actions matter, but ideas win. And ideas don't get seeded with money (well, in the long-term... because propaganda and stuff, but I hope you get the gist).

In another comment you mention you don't like walking. These likings are not by any means frozen in you. Maybe you never tried enjoying walking alone, with your thoughts drifting away in your mind and just living the present moment. Comfort is really subjective, I really think what we should all yearn for is the greater good, which, suprisingly doesn't cost that much in the end and gives you a real sentiment of fulfillment. It's just a matter of /being/ that change.

[super-serial]

I actually live in a city a few blocks from work, don't own a car, and only eat poultry/eggs which have a lower carbon footprint than red meat. On the other hand I do order a lot of crap from Amazon.

It's not so much about offsetting my personal carbon emissions - it's more about supporting projects that could potentially slow down runaway global warming. There are a lot of feedback loops in the pipeline in the next 20 years that will accelerate climate change (arctic ice melts, more heat gets absorbed etc). Those feedback loops are going to kick in even if we stopped all human emissions today. So when that happens and drastic environmental changes start occurring, I'm hoping we'll have some demonstrated solutions like advanced weathering we could scale up.

[taneq]

After all, being carbon neutral is about punishing you for your self-indulgence, not anything to do with actually being neutral in terms of carbon emissions.

[hnhg]

You can make the same point in a less aggressive manner.

[leni536]

While I don't agree with the tone, $400 implies the average CO2 emission in the US (16 tons/capita/year) which is fairly high. I wonder how much an individual can lower their own contribution.

[markvdb]

It takes a lot of mental bandwidth to think about lowering your own CO² emission. Still useful in terms of awareness though! Less driving and flying, less meat, low cost/high reward home energy efficiency improvements, ... are quite obvious ways.

It's important though not to overlook the effect of investing in other people's carbon efficiency instead. A piece of anecdotal evidence. I willingly spent ~25000€ extra on my Belgium home's energy efficiency. One year later, I end up living in Latvia, where many places don't even have simple radiators valves. When their appartments with city heating get too hot in winter, they just open the window at -30°C! Imagine spending just 5000€ on my home, and the rest offering free radiator valves installations in Latvia -- or other even more efficient schemes of course!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

[belorn]

It is useful to be aware and as such it is good to know the effectiveness of each action.

Going car-less for a year is similar to going vegan for three years or doing 3 crossing of the Atlantic by plane. Switching over to buy exclusively "green energy" is almost twice as effective in reducing CO² emission compared to a vegan diet per year. All those are high impact changes, while home energy efficiency improvements are medium to low impact changes, with wall insulation estimated to be about 50% compared to eating less meat and up to 10th compared to a vegan diet.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

[Gravityloss]

Price signals are one way to do this. This will hit people unequally though, so probably needs some other things at the same time.

Ie if energy price is raised a lot, it will make poor people's lives a lot harder suddenly.

But currently the price of things is very much disconnected from the climate impacts

[nmeofthestate]

>Why don't you just stop eating meat

I saw a recent study that said everyone going veggie in the developed world would only have a couple of percentage points effects on emissions. Surprisingly ineffective.

[paulie999]

Errr, citation?

[photojosh]

Not quite what you were after, but I saw this Twitter thread that claims (with evidence) that the greenhouse gas contributions of meat and agriculture are overstated: https://twitter.com/fleroy1974/status/1053398265817894914

[dereke]

I was under the impression that guy was paid by like the Belgium meat board or something. I can't find the reference to that right now so might be wrong. (I came across him in another thread where it was discussed)

[workycacc]

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not both? Why not more?

We don't know if the OP already has a fairly low carbon footprint, or has done all they can to reduce it.

Cumulative effort and reducing carbon footprints on many fronts is what we need.

Things like:

- Walk / Cycle where you can. Use public transport where you cant.

- Have your heating / AC lower.

- Stop using single use plastics.

- Eat less meat.

- Swap all your bulbs to low power equivalents.

- Take shorter showers.

- Turn off your work monitors / PC when you leave the office. (Assuming tech population here)

- Switch to a power provider that only uses 100% renewable power. (Like bulb in the UK)

- Support a charity that is planting trees or is fighting to save the rain forest.

- Donate/pay to have some charity/company do some carbon removal for you.

- Change your browsers default search engine to Ecosia (Bing results and they plant trees with the profits)

Lots of tiny things can be done now, with relatively little effort. In parallel with companies and researchers work on better carbon capture techniques.

[zeroname]

> Lots of tiny things can be done now, with relatively little effort.

Those little things of "low effort" have just as little impact. Those things that are significant (transportation, meat consumption, heating) would also represent significant changes to my level of comfort. I like meat. I like being warm. I like not walking everywhere. I dislike public transport. I like long hot showers. I like to keep my PC running.

On the other hand, I can budget some money for the "luxury" of being carbon neutral. I can also not do that and keep on living the way do. The money is on the table, those changes to my lifestyle aren't.