Make your life carbon neutral? | Hacker News Reader

Make your life carbon neutral?

3 pointshadleycode7 comments

Good day beautiful HN

For me, offsetting your carbon footprint is a super quick and simple way to make a difference for a small cost without having to change your way of life.

Personally I'm veggie, rarely fly or drive, and am conscious of my footprint in my day to day life - yet I'm starting to get stuck on where to improve next (without radically changing my lifestyle) so for me carbon offsets are an easy win.

I know it's not an end-all solution to climate change, but if everybody did so I think it would make a huge difference. Especially if they are verifiable (evidence of removal), additional (wouldn't have happened without the offset) and transparent (can be audited).

I'm wondering what this community thinks.

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Offsets - if they are real offsets are great. Problem is that many offsets are not really offsets in the sense that they are not "additive". They don't really remove or sequester CO2e. Rather, they claim or use the CO2e saved by an activity or project which is being removed anyway. A good example of this is trees which already exist. Yes - they sequester carbon - but they're already doing it. Complex issue so be careful!

I think it's a good way to raise awareness and I love to see projects like this, but the only thing that will truly bring lasting change will be to force out all the politicians that do nothing at best, or worse yet, let themselves be bribed into holding or rolling back environmental policies.

Nothing will change unless we begin to hold the people accountable that have the responsibility to move countries forward and police mega polluters.

Any project in the space, if they want to make a difference, needs a plan on how they can increase pressure on representatives in a meaningful way.

The only alternative to that is to make polluting unprofitable for corporations. The best way to do that would be a (properly implemented) carbon tax, of course. The second best way is to destroy the business model of these companies, examples being EV replacing other cars and lab meat making the traditional meat industry obsolete. To both of these approaches politics still plays a huge role in via subsidies and regulation.

Agree - carbon tax could be a quick way to make carbon-intensive business much less profitable. The issue with this is it needs to be implemented world-wide otherwise companies have a big incentive to relocate their production where the tax is cheaper.

Unless the carbon tax considers embedded carbon on imports in enough countries? (enough is hard to define though, I acknowledge)

Disclaimer: I'm launching this solution as a subscription under https://carboncroc.com/individuals - so in a way this is market research :)

This might be better suited as an 'Ask HN', or more likely a 'Show HN'

Thanks for the tip (long time lurker - first time poster so still don't know the codes)

I wasn't sure about a Show HN because our dashboard is behind a login wall. Ask HN might be better indeed :)

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