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Comment by yetanother12345 | Hacker News Reader

Let me get this right...

You buy some piece of land, or (as per TFA) lease it for 30 years. Then, you do nothing with it.

On the basis of you having the potential of doing something with it, you calculate a hypothetical difference in "potential scope of hypothetical activity" somehow denominated in the CO2 unit. The exact procedure for doing this is neither known, reproducible, nor audited?

This purely fictional "measure" (for lack of a better term) is then renamed to "credits" and converted to some monetary unit, like, say USD. The exchange rate is then what? And why?

Last, you sell - as in actually sell - this purely fictional nothingness to states and big corporations who all have multiple economists and/or scientists employed. Plus ample access to external specialists if their own capacities should somehow need a reality check...

Is it me, or does this seem a bit weird (to put it politely)?

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Yes this is weird and also may be exactly what we need to do.

Here’s a few politicians from various countries explaining, basically, ”Look we need to develop. If you need us not to cut down the jungle, you should pay. The economic activity needs to come from somewhere. We can’t live in poverty forever”

https://time.com/6233998/brazil-indonesia-rainforests-climat...

https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/where-is-the-money-brazil-...

Think of it as money paid for conservation. Then it all makes sense.

Except the Western nations/companies who buy the credits no longer have to reduce their emissions.

It’s great that Liberia has an incentive to conserve its forest. It’s not so great that doing so gives the rest of the world a license to pollute.

And it's unclear who is even responsible for making the final decision on whether the 'licensed' forests have been degraded in any way 30 years from now, and what authority they have to do anything.

The rest of the world had a de-facto license to pollute to begin with.

> Think of it as money paid for conservation. Then it all makes sense.

...And this payment can be used by the buyers to justify destroying the climate elsewhere, in a more efficient way.

I mean something is better than nothing?

Climate change is one of those things where asking for perfection is the perfect way to ensure nothing happens. This is a common lobbying tactic aimed at preventing change. If that’s not your intention, I recommend a different approach – encouraging anything that might help.

> I recommend a different approach – encouraging anything that might help.

Well, that's the point. I do not believe this is helpful, and I do believe this takes the space of other actions: in terms of not discussing the alternatives and in terms of taking time and effort to implement, both of which are in limited supply.

> Climate change is one of those things where asking for perfection is the perfect way to ensure nothing happens.

It's also one of those things where even the most watered down plans are not sufficiently acted upon, and where every target eventually ends up not being respected.

I'm all for compromise, but it takes two to compromise. And, as you mentioned, one side is not lobbying for compromise.

Vs destroying everything everywhere. But hey, gotta pump up more humans.

I'm from Brazil, a developing country. Sometimes I express here on HN the fact I'd burn down the entire Amazon jungle if doing that would give us enough industrial strength to rival the USA and China. That jungle just doesn't matter to me. If you handed me a button that burned down the entire Amazon and told me Brazil would be the most prosperous nation on earth if I pushed it, I wouldn't even think twice.

Usually I just get downvoted until my post is white but someone once replied with an interesting proposition: paying me not to do it. I just laughed it off because it seemed completely insane to me. Why would they pay off a developing country not to develop itself?

And now I come across this thread and it seems these people are doing exactly that. Why our president isn't jumping at that chance is beyond me.

You shouldn't be downvoted, IMHO. In fact, you pose a really interesting question, and also challenge, to the rest of the world.

Your country has a resource, it could monetize it, the rest of the world should incentivize you to NOT cut down the forest, in order to have a better Earth.

At the end of the day, we like all other species have our root loop as self preservation and procreation.

In our modern society, money is inherently tied to survival as it can be traded with resources that helps further the root loop.

We humans, and every other living thing are a competing distributed system because of a limited resource environment.

So if you light up Amazon, Congo and Daintree rainforests to get a massive economic boost. Go for it!

However the question is how much you care about your great great grandchildren? Because they’ll be getting a very shit deal.

If we had another backup planet, I’d be all down for setting shit on fire.

Earth is all we got in the entire 100B light year observable universe as far as we know.

If all of Amazon is lit on fire, that likely explains why we can’t find any intelligent anywhere.

And I'm sure somewhere else, there's a person in their 60s in the US who'd push a button that made all life on earth that uses sexual reproduction infertile and unable to continue past the current generation if it meant they got to live a rich western life for their remaining years.

I don't think the notion that humans are self-interested is particular surprising. It's more notable when we are not.

Carbon credits were created to tax developing nations by those who have already developed on said carbon. So the whole thing is a bit con.

…and people think crypto doesn’t make sense lol!!

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