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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Carbon credits seem too cheap. I just offset a round trip flight between California and New York with about $15 in carbon credits. If solving climate change was that cheap (about 5% the cost of that flight), I think the world have done much more by now. I can only think that solving climatate change is going to cost a lot more money and require a lot more lifestyle changes.

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It would definitely involve lifestyle changes, but de-carbonizing our society really wouldn't cost much more than the 5% you mention. Estimates are it would cost between 1-4% of GDP by 2030, and 2-6% by 2050[1].

I think the main reason it's cast as expensive is that there are corporations that would basically have to shut down, e.g. oil & gas, mining companies. They are telling everyone who will listen how expensive dealing with climate change will be - see the latest Australian election for example. In a way, they are right - they are going to lose all their revenue when we finally get them to stop extracting fossil fuels for burning. But society has a whole won't notice that much - I remember reading somewhere that switching to flushing toilets and sewer systems cost about the same amount in terms of GDP.

[1] http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/faqs/how-much-will-it...

I agree that it really does feel that way. I don't really have an explanation for it either and I do wonder if the figures are accurate.

Where did you buy credits from? The one I found which seems the most legit is Cool Effect: https://www.cooleffect.org/

You can pick your project. This seemed like the most credible "offset" to me: https://www.cooleffect.org/content/project/renewable-energy-...

Problem with planting or keeping trees is it is a future promise and a long term one and that just seems too easy to break. (either on purpose or due to other factors)

I buy them from Cool Effect. I try to pick energy projects because it’s easier to see the accounting ... and you get carbon sequestration faster (trees take a long time to grow vs erecting a wind turbine).

I spent some time researching carbon credit providers and what I found was the the only way they have to distribute credits is through online advertising. That means that they have to spend multiples of the actual wholesale credit costs on ads just to sell them.

By my estimate, Cool Effect spends around 3-4x of the actual credit costs on marketing related expenses. This is publicly available through their 990 filing.

https://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/475/475068...

I inquired from credit wholesalers about large volume pricing and found that the actual cost is less than $3/ton of CO2e. For an average US consumer with a 20 ton carbon footprint, that would come out to $60/year or $5/mo if sold at cost. To me this is a no-brainer for anyone that wants to be carbon neutral immediately.

I'm setting up a carbon credit buying club where we can get them at wholesale prices. My goal is to sell them right at cost in a radically transparent way where members provide all the marketing we need. If anyone here is interested in joining, you can email me at paul@carbonspace.com.

That's unsurprising in a way, but does it really make a difference between $180/year vs $60/year? Both of those are pretty in the noise.

CoolEffect seems do be doing a nice job of both marketing and explaining and verifying their projects. I have no problem paying a premium for that. (remember this thread started as surprise that it could be SO CHEAP)

A recent poll on the issue shows that while a rising number of people now believe in climate change, they are unwiling to put as much as $10 a month towards solving it. [1]

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/do-most-...

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