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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

I love financial engineering stuff like this that leaks out into more 'real world'/physical things (being not a finance professional). DDG has purchased so much carbon footprint offsetting whatevers that it's 'carbon negative'... it is... funding (in carbon allowance) 'carbon positive' companies? I'm (hopefully) obviously joking - you can plant lots of trees without saying 'its ok to burn more coal now' - but it's fun to think about isn't it.

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Usually, rather than just planting trees, carbon offsets do things like replacing inefficient equipment or processes in developing countries. There's a lot of low hanging fruit that can be decarbonised / reduced significantly with a little bit of investment.

Over time these low hanging fruit will all be picked resulting in an increase in the cost of carbon offsets.

Oh sure, trees is just the dumb go-to example/explanation for whatever reason. I don't think that changes my point there though? You can also do more of 'replacing inefficient equipment or processes' without it excusing some new extra pollution or whatever as though a zero-sum 'carbon neutral' is what's ultimately desirable.

I just think it's fun to think of DDG in this scenario looking at it like Oh we bought too much carbon offset, now we're carbon negative, we have a nice lot of negative carbon on our books, instead of issuing bonds let's raise some cash reducing our negative carbon assets.

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