Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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