98% of all recent environmental claims can be categorized as "greenwashing" | Hacker News Reader

98% of all recent environmental claims can be categorized as "greenwashing"

eurekalert.org

44 pointsrobtherobber20 comments

“from the world’s largest meat and dairy companies”

Title length limits are tough but this is pretty critical context.

"meat and dairy companies lie out their ass 98% of the time"

Indeed; sorry for leaving that out, it was a judgement call triggered by HN limits. However, whilst very relevant, it doesn't in fact change the point that much.

Carbon offsetting is a nonsense.

Any company that uses it, is doing nothing other than buying a grant to pollute.

I agree with the second sentence but I don't see how it implies the first. "Leave no trace" is a principle of outdoor recreation, not the fundamental meaning of life, and generating greenhouse gases is often necessary to produce goods and services people enjoy.

"Buying grants to pollute" is literally how cap-and-trade systems work, and they've been extremely effective at reducing pollution. We don't hear about "acid rain" anymore because of cap-and-trade of sulfur dioxide.

But we don't really have cap-and-trade for carbon, so the next best thing is public pressure to be net-zero rather than literally zero.

> We don't hear about "acid rain" anymore

Because of the de-industrialization of the West.

More because we switched away from coal, and what coal we still use we pre-process to remove the sulfur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offsets_and_credits#Lim...

a cap-and-trade system is just a tax but more complicated and less predictable

Agreed. Carbon offsetting always reminds me of this old The Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2008/02/01/bofh_episode_4/

I wouldn't qualify "These commitments appear to rely on offsetting carbon emissions rather than decarbonizing directly" as greenwashing, although it is indeed a bit misleading.

As the full title asserts:

98% of all recent environmental claims and commitments from the world’s largest meat and dairy companies can be categorized as “greenwashing”, or intentionally misleading

The claim that "ExampleCo will be net zero by 2028" is intentionally misleading if it's going to be an accounting trick rather than an actual real reduction in emmissions within ExampleCo's footprint.

That's aside from many of the carbon offset schemes being bandied about really don't bear much in the way of close scrutiny. The "all talk and ineffectual action" in carbon offsetting is classic greenwashing though, surely?

What could "net zero" possibly mean other than "zero as a matter of accounting"? I definitely think meat and dairy companies should reduce emissions to the extent that they can, but you're not going to convince the cows to stop burping. If you accept the premise that people are going to keep on eating animal products (I'm aware that the authors may not!), offsets are the only option.

Could be a language thing, I'm Australian and that quote from my comment in full was

if it's going to be an accounting trick

My intenty there was to distinguish between "net zero as a matter of legitimate above board easy to follow accounting that can be audited (and pass)" and "net zero via a smoke and mirrors accounting deception with a few divide by zeros and some of the same logic from the proof that 1==2".

> but you're not going to convince the cows to stop burping.

Well, no - but you / we can introduce kangaroo gut biota to cows.

It’s really only “misleading” to the extent that any offset/credit scheme is also misleading. Inherent in the words “net zero” is the fact that emissions will continue, but the claim is that something else will be done to make the total effect the same as if zero emission occurred.

It’s no more misleading than “my net income was $X” is misleading because my gross income was $X + $Y.

- i asked a question very recently like what would happen to emissions if the whole world went vegan

- feel free to check my history and join the discussion on it

- do you think we ll cut down emissions by 60%?

The only thing that might save civilisation at this point is some kind of magic carbon capture technology.

Or a giant sun shade.

Or perhaps planetary-scale reforesting. But that's more speculative.

We passed the "we need to reduce emissions" marker at least a decade ago.

Emissions don't just need to be reduced, they need to be objectively greenhouse gas negative for a good long while. Meaning centuries.

If that doesn't happen - and it's looking really unlikely - catastrophic change is locked in.

The result will be population destruction at a scale never seen in all of recorded history. That's going to do more to minimise emissions than veganism will.

There are many projects which capture carbon and produces fuel, including growing crops, they are just more expensive than oil. So, realistic scenario at this point is some war which will destroy oil industry in certain areas (gulf, Russia), and carbon capture will be more viable.

there are two kinds of people ! those that claim that there are only two kinds of people, and those that do not claim that.

Its supposed to be humor, because declaring "the only thing that ... is .. " is, well, literally stupid.

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