Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

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A less reckless article would frame the challenges we need to solve rather than blasting that credits for reforestation is bad.

I care a lot about environmental degradation, and I disagree. The point of the article is that the existence of carbon credits encourages people to continue their current unsustainable lifestyles rather than making deeper changes that actually work:

"In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last."

Yes, there are secondary benefits to landscape preservation, but if it is true that carbon credits are not offsetting the environmental damage that they claim to, I think it's fair to say that their existence causes harm. It is a problem if people are spending money on an expensive placebo instead of actually working toward a actual solution.

I think your disagreement with the author is that you feel current carbon credit system is already a partial positive, and that the system will naturally evolve toward being more effective. Rather than a placebo, it sounds like you think it's more like an aspirin that will eventually evolve to become an actual cure . Is there evidence that points in that direction?

Forests and sustainable land-use management sequester massive amounts of carbon. Full stop. They're up on the list of recommended actions by the IPCC. We need to be doing it. And landowners aren't going to do it for free; they need to be paid.

Like I said, there is a potential moral hazard with credits – companies think they can offset and continue emitting. Currently this is possible because carbon, in general, is still ridiculously inexpensive. Aggressive carbon taxes are ultimately what's going to bring down emissions.

Once economic constraints are in place, you still need to reduce carbon. And again, forests are one of the best ways to do this.

My problem with the article is that it's flippant towards carbon credits. It's highlighting problems with the current implementation, and using that to make a judgment about the whole idea of carbon credits.

We need a carbon tax, and we need better standards of accountability. These are solvable problems.

The other moral hazard is if you pay people to not cut down forests it encourages all the worlds forest owners to request payment for leaving them alone or threatening to chop them if not paid.

I don't know what the term for this is, but it's a common issue with trying to get people to stop doing something, if you make it a fiscal penalty, they're almost always more likely to do it because now you've made it OK as long as the penalty is paid. Best example I can come up with is child card services and care takers arriving late for pickup.

I've seen studies that show adding a monetary penalty, even per minute at pretty high rates, results in even later pickups because there's no guilt for being late, as long as their following the rules (pay money) vs just being late, where there's some amount of guilt for not honoring the agreed upon rules.

I'm guessing this has to be a similar situation. These companies can now comfortably play within the rules by just paying money. Until that amount of money is greater than any ongoing costs plus initial risks, I think we'll see companies just "paying the tax".

That seems like a pretty solvable problem - even for daycares. First time you’re late, 5$, second time 20$, n + 1 time = (n+1)*10. The incentive is not to make a habit of it at the very least because the costs will add up.

If you think that carbon credits by their nature can't accomplish what is needed, then what do you think would?

That's a good question, but I don't know that I have a good answer.

First, I would define "what is needed" as reducing the level of human impact on the ecosystem to a sustainable level. Implicit in this is that I think our current impact is ecologically unsustainable. Second, I don't think an approach that puts all the emphasis on "carbon" is appropriate. A system that narrowly focuses on canceling the negative effects of CO2 might be a necessary component, but is not sufficient.

I think a real solution requires large scale behavioral change that starts now. I don't trust that any "solution" that involves carrying on more or less as we currently are plus the addition of a small tithe for conservation efforts is workable. If we want progress, we need to actually cut back on on our consumption, rather than offsetting it with good intentions.

I may be overly pessimistic, but my current belief is that it won't be possible to have a sustainable earth with our current levels of population and the current first-world standard of living. Technology might eventually get us there, but not on the timescale we need. Since the world as a whole is unlikely to voluntarily accept such as step backward, I think it's likely that the next 100 years will involve a lot of strife and suffering when the reductions occur involuntarily. While we may not be able to completely avoid this outcome, our goal should be to minimize the trauma and depth of the disaster.

On a more optimistic note, I'd suggest that in the meantime we can support reforestation efforts on their own merits without suggesting that they are also a cure-all for the rest of our ecological ills.

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