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Comment by hnhg | Hacker News Reader

It's great that they're measuring but claiming to be carbon negative by purchasing offsets is quite a stretch. It really dilutes the true meaning of it. Also, the offsetting markets are very murky indeed. In many cases, offsets are IOUs that haven't been realised yet. Also, offsetting credits often come from projects where you can't even know or guarantee the lifetime effect of the projects, like reforestation - who guarantees that those projects will be around in ten years?

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You are right, every business should be working to minimise the impact they have rather than offsetting it. Carbon free is better than carbon neutral[1], of course, but ultimately you can't be entirely carbon free. Running servers, moving bits around the internet, and just running a business uses CO2. To try to offset what you can (and more in the case of DDG!) is still a positive climate action.

[1] Carbon free means not causing carbon to be released; carbon neutral is offsetting the carbon that's released by capturing it somewhere else.

Yeah, it kinda seems like buying offsets does nothing to actually reduce real Co2 emissions and its more "fund a project that aims to maybe, possibly, sometime in the future reduce Co2 emissions"

I think these projects are worthwhile, and do need investment, but carbon offsetting seems like a disingenuous term to use here. Especially if the stuff that is funded doesn't even work out.

Agreed. I actually made a quick edit to include that, and then saw you made the same point.

It's what companies always mean when they write about carbon offsetting. I don't see the problem tbh. Buying offsets drives up the price of these offsets and that in turn spurs investment in less carbon intensive alternatives.

The other issue with offsetting is that it's an easy trick to wash over any increases in carbon output. Outputs increased by 50% in a year? Just offset more. The aim should be to minimize output as much as possible, rather than brushing it under the rug of questionable offsetting.

Indeed, it dilutes at best.

We're to expect that, as demand increases, whoever is selling the negative carbon will eventually double-sell the same negative carbon.

I suspect that whoever is buying has no way to check.

The offset credits are gold standard credits that have to remove the carbon with in a set timeframe of their existence, be audited, and have a positive human impact.

For each credit worth of carbon DDG activities do, they are offsetting 1.25 credits worth of carbon through purchasing those credits.

But, further still they are then buying additional credits through startups that actually remove carbon from the air and sequester it, as it outlines in the article.

You've said everything I wanted to say.

I therefore pledge to reduce my carbon footprint to zero for 300 years after my 120th birthday.

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