What percentage of your carbon footprint do you reckon that your donation is offsetting?
"Carbon footprint" was originally invented by the public relations agency Ogilvy & Mather for BP as a concept to divert attention from industry to individuals.
https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...
That's not to say that public pressure is not a good thing. It is. But the actual causal effect it has for a better future is in the form of creating political sentiment. Individual carbon economy is mostly about promoting a political sentiment via signaling.
But generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint" since this was not an engineering concept to start with. If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome. Buying less stuff you don't need is also always good I think. For example I use my cell phones until something irrevocably gives up and drive my current car as long as possible (generally making a new car is always more resource consuming than driving the current one I think).
[0] For example Vaclaw Smil "How the world really works" discusses our fossil fuel based economy at length
In German, it's more common to refer to an ecological footprint, its usage which goes back to at least 1992, and it wasn't coined by a PR company, but by very straight laced environmentalists.
I don't know whether BP falsified the evidence here, but everything kinda points towards that it really is the consumers that drive demand.
> generally it's a fools errand trying to scientifically balance your "carbon footprint"
How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that?
> If it makes you feel good to plant trees do it! Trees are awesome.
But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money, and not let people fall for feel-good tree planting only for them to find out ten years down the line that their hard-earned money went into /dev/null and they should have done (and could have been told about) something like meat reduction or solar panels instead?
They didn't say that.
> How would you, then, unscientifically solve climate change if we aren't supposed to take individual action to bring our own footprint to net zero, encourage others to do the same, and bring about societal change using market pressure and all that?
The individual action here is minor. Market pressure can work but only in certain circumstances. They already suggested working on political sentiment, since laws can do a lot here to tax or force certain methods.
> But if the "you" in this sentence is being made to feel good for the wrong reasons, isn't that dishonest? Shouldn't we be looking at what is actually effective use of your money [...]
I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is also an advocate for effective use of money, specifically by focusing on the wider changes and not focusing much on the carbon footprint concept.
But you don't have to spend all your money on improving the world as much as possible.
The simple answer is to vote, and if you can spare the time/money/effort to go and become political active.
Removing coal/oil/natural gas plants won't occur without political will. We need political will to build out rail infrastructure, regulating air/boat fuels, changing subsidies for fossil fuels into emission free alternatives, prioritize bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and so on.
Right now we had politicians in EU voting that natural gas is "green", driving primarily by a specific political party in Germany, and now the same people are turning on coal and oil power plants. Societal change need to start with replacing people in power that view fossil fuel as a tool to be used rather than something that should be left in the ground. No individual action can get near to undo the damage that those politicians are doing by allowing fossil fuels to be burned.
Ofcourse if you get your gas from a not so friendly imperialistic autocrat who decides to go full in on military territorial expansion and uses gas as a economic weapon you are screwed and need to do whatever you can and is necessary.
Gas is a terrible for backup for wind/solar, especially further up north. Even in countries who in optimal weather can have 100% energy from wind (Denmark reached this a while back), gas and other fossil fuel power plants are still the single highest source of emissions by a large margin. Wind operate on average around 40-60%, which mean that half the energy used has to be sourced elsewhere. When ~50% of your energy comes from "backup", then the word "backup" looses its meaning, and that is in fairly good situation where wind has been built out to have 100% capacity.
I could see an argument for gas if it was used less than 1%, and with a decrease use as the grid expanded their capacity, but that is not the reality we got in northern Europe. Instead we see an increase in fossil fuels usage each year. With increase use we also get increased prices, with energy prices being exceptional high and rising. Politically this is a terrible loss for everyone except those investing into fossil fuels, and in the current economical downturn, fossil fuel companies are doing very well at the moment.
It’s not about will you fly or take the train. The food we eat, the clothes we wear - everything has fossil fuel inputs at some point.
One can choose to consume less. Buy second hand etc. Then the fossil inputs in mining, transport, farming and whatnot will not be repeated.
Consumer choice electricity? You can’t choose non-fossil based electricity unless someone has invested large amounts of capital in e.g wind power.
The only thing that can affect things this large is industrial policy which again in democratic countries needs political support.
That’s why consumer carbon footprint is gaslighting. The individual choise does not exist, and trying to spin the carbon economy narrative towards consumer responsibility was a backhanded attempt to delay the energy transition which only the war in Ukraine launched to a better trajectory.
I was not suggesting people spend all of their money planting trees. I was thinking it in the context that sometimes people want to do something symbolic with extra cash that makes them feel better. It was not intended as a moral imperitive.
Here is my reasoning. Say I give enough to plant 10 trees a month. In 10 years that's 1,200 trees. Let's say half of them die, we're left with 600. Assuming a tree absorb 1 ton of CO2 throughout its life, that 600 tons. I live in a place where CO2 emissions per capita are about 6 tons a year (check for yourself here and don't forget to compare with the US https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis... ).
According to this back of the enveloppe calculation after 10 years I would have planted enough trees to offset 100 years of carbon emissions.
In any case, it really puts into perspective how messed up our continued use of fossil fuels is.
Just found this estimate 'the average tree absorbs an average of 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, of carbon dioxide per year for the first 20 years.' My quick calculation of 1 ton of CO2 being absorbed is off by a factor of five then (200kg over 20 years).