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Comment by digb | Hacker News Reader

I really really love how this post touches on the bullshit that is the carbon credit market. Question: what incentive do BigCos have to buy your "high quality" carbon offsets vs the inferior ones you mentioned? Do you price cheaper per ton of CO2 credited? At the end of the day they're just trying to comply at the cheapest price possible, right?

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There is definitely a lot of bullshit out there but when companies decide to pay for climate mitigation, even as a marketing ploy, I think that is net good.

Many companies are certainly looking to buy the cheapest credits they can find but there are promising indications that things are changing, led by companies like Stripe and Shopify.

This is a useful business that only exists because of carbon credits.

I winced a bit at their attacks on low quality carbon credits because the very idea has been under sustained attack by climate change deniers for decades.

Oh, rich people just paying money for carbon credits and still flying around the world, that's not real it's all fake, like climate change.

Obviously some are better than others, but the concept itself is useful and worth fighting to improve, not write off.

The post says these credits are 10x cheaper

We are 10x cheaper than the high-quality carbon removal that for example Stripe Climate is purchasing. But we are 10x more expensive than the "low quality" credits that I describe in the post. So overall there is a 100x differential between what is allegedly the same ton of carbon, based on perceived quality and other factors.

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