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On January 16 2020 07:57 JimmiC wrote:
What he is saying (and feel free to correct me if I have misinterpreted) is that the problem is not a mysterious group of the "capitalist class" the problem is all of us and our mind set and day to day decisions. That we need to find a way to bring environmental concerns to be peoples number one concern instead of how much money they make and stuff they can get.
And this is the issues with all populists no matter where they are on the spectrum there is no simple solutions to extremely complex problems it is not the capital class, the Jews, the immigrants, the sinners, the Christians, the Muslims, or whatever other ones there are. It is all of us and so far all the systems that have been piloted in the real world all end up the same way unless there is enough checks and balances. So far we have needed private business and citizens to check government and government to check private businesses and citizens.
I would love if you would get into the moving it more part, because that is the tricky part. I think social democracy has been shown to be a pretty darn good system and why I think Bernie could do a lot of good in the states. But until you get the courage to actually explain what you mean by moving more and actually get into the details and be willing to hear some of the flaws it is going to continue to sound like a fairy tale of a populist.
It's not the "capitalist class" as much as capitalism producing a situation in which people consolidate too much power, which is where we currently are.
A small amount of people have consolidated the vast majority of power. In this situation it doesn't matter what majority of people "prioritize," because through the levers of money and power, the "power class" can stifle the growth/progress/best-interest of everyone else... in order to maintain their grip on power.
Look at Greta T. and her speaking out at DAVOS, despite her words and pleas, the people with power ignore her... because money and the system of capitalism has afforded them the ability to skew wealth inequality so far in one direction.
Look at the laws around guns in the US. Polling shows that they vast majority of people want gun laws to be changed in favor of more regulation, but nothing has happened after an insane amount of death and mass shooting.
This is because people with money/power have lobbied for the halt of any progress on the issue, which is because it threatens their power.
In capitalism the good of the many is ignored and stifled by the powerful few, and this is the world we live in now. If power was spread more evenly, the priority of the many could be enacted. *Instead, now the priority of the many is already climate change, but nothing can happen because the powerful push a false narrative (climate change is fake)... and you end up with Australia burning to the ground.
The way I hear N. is that you need to change the system we exist in to create fertile ground for change to occur... otherwise the system itself holds back any possibility of progress.... Like trying to grow a cactus in a lush forest.
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On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:21 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:15 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 06:59 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 06:38 Belisarius wrote:Ah good, we are here again.
It will take a monumental change of peoples lifestyles and goals to fix the environment, globally. The environment does not care if workers own the means of production or not. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable.
This is the core problem that I have never seen a satisfactory response to. At this point, you two might as well be advocating we solve everything by magic. You are welcome, at any time, to remove that impression by describing what you would like to do. No problem, thanks for asking. There are two main drivers of climate change, it's emissions by the more developped countries and emissions by the industry. Industry is responsible for most of the emissions of course but there's also a more individualistic element in that our way of life produces a level of emissions that is not really sustainable long term. The issue that capitalism has in dealing with this is that because it allocates too much power to the specific people who run the industries, the capitalist class, it is ill-equipped to activate change in those. So instead we observe what we have seen in the world today: people should take personal responsibility and change their lives according to climate, we should stop having vacations, we should stop using cars, we should pee in the shower. This is something but it's not enough because of the dual nature of the problem we face. We see that capitalism is "decent" at demanding that people change their lifestyles, it can use propaganda, it can tax them if they behave poorly, that sort of thing. We also see that capitalism is atrocious at demanding that industry changes, because of the amount of power allocated to the bosses of industry, and because of the profit motive that causes every change to be adopted reluctantly. Therefore a logical step to make is to increase the power that we have over industry. We can do that using social democracy and have the government regulate the businesses so that they are forced to be more ecofriendly. That has issues, but either way it's the only realistic step that we have so let's do that. The reluctance that will be shown by industry and the general issues of corruption and propaganda will make it so that it's not enough though. It isn't realistic to expect that the capitalist class won't fight back. Corruption will be more profitable than respecting their limits, so they will corrupt the controllers. All the change that we see will be done reluctantly, thus basically ensuring that it isn't bold enough to lead us to where we need to be. And they will still hold more power on society than the rest of us do, which means they will be in prime position to influence politics and make the discourse drift right again in the near future even if we manage to win right now. That's why we shouldn't stop there, logically, in an ecologic framework. Luckily not stopping there is also a good thing in general, so it's not a problem that we have to continue. You didn't address his point tho. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable If you change up who owns the industry then they become the class of people who fight against climate change regulations because they now control the industry. By changing ownership from a couple of rich people to a lot of 'poor' people your just increasing the number of people you are fighting and not reducing their power at all, they still control the industry. It's somewhat easy for a few rich people to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change. It's a lot harder for the entirety of the workers of a company to do so. So no, I don't think that a democratic worker force would make the same decisions than a single CEO would, in fact I think that's pretty ludicrous to believe. It's not just that, it would also be harder for them to promote actively lying to the people for personal benefit, as the whole enterprise would have to agree to do that. So we wouldn't see as much propaganda and in consequence, not as much climate change or overall science denial. You are underestimating the dynamic of an elite vs a people. Replacing the elites with the people doesn't just make the people the elite. They're still the people. They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green. People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late. Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with.
It's not so pessimistic, eventually we all die 
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On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should)
The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart.
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On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should)
I don't agree with the bolded part at all. I mean... I agree that (most) companies currently put profit above all else (private, public or other forms, they all do this). I just disagree that they *should* do this. Where does this moral obligation to chase profit to the exclusion of everything else come from?
Logically, this means that "a company" were given the opportunity to murder someone for money, they *ought* to do it, and the only thing stopping them from pursuing this line of profit is the law. I find it hard to believe that you think that a company *should* do that. So clearly we can probably find some things that companies *ought* to do even though it costs them money. Is it then so hard to imagine that some people think companies *ought* to reduce their environmental impact? And that that moral imperative comes even above their obligation to their shareholders to make a profit?
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On January 17 2020 16:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should) The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart.
I'd hope after all this practice you lot would at least be better at shooting the messenger
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On January 16 2020 23:37 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 22:39 Acrofales wrote:On January 16 2020 09:48 IgnE wrote:On January 16 2020 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 08:17 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 08:03 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:41 Gorsameth wrote:On January 16 2020 07:33 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2020 07:28 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]They don't have to insulate themselves from the consequences. They just don't have to give a shit, or less shit then they give about losing 20% of their pay (random ass number) for the company to become green.
People are really good at ignoring negative consequences that are not directly apparent, and by the time we see direct consequences of climate change, beyond "oh this year is a little hotter then the previous one" it will be way way to late. Which do you think is more likely, that 50% of the workers of a company that are not insulated collectively decide not to give a shit, or that a board of CEOs that are insulated decide not to give a shit? Sounds fairly clear cut to me, do you disagree? I'd love to see why. I will confidently say neither of them will give enough of a shit. Which again goes back to what Belisarius said. And there is zero evidence that once they do the people make decisions collectively that are better for the environment and not to make their own lifestyles more comfortable So far your answer still is 'magic'. Walk up to 100 average Joes and ask them how much salary and living comfort they will give up to save the environment. The answer will be "not enough". Well then we're going to die, which I also believe is the most likely outcome. Is that an issue for you? On January 16 2020 05:14 Nebuchad wrote:
Well yeah, it's likely that humanity is screwed. We realize that. Doesn't mean we just stop fighting in my book. Not particularly, I resigned myself to the fact that humanity as a whole isn't going to do enough a while ago. And yes I am aware that is a rather pessimistic outlook. Nor do I think you shouldn't stop fighting. But you should realise that people aren't just going to jump aboard of whatever idea you come up with. I should have mentioned that I don't want you to jump aboard my ideas, I want us to come together and figure out better ideas together once we have acknowledged that the ideas we have currently aren't working. It's a pretty massive failure of me to never have mentioned that before on the forum, I realize that if I had people would stop saying this to me. My belief is that humanity is the fundamental issue with the problems facing humanity. Hopefully we survive long enough to develop advanced enough AI to take over the task of making important decisions for us. You can imagine a situation wherein AI distribution of certain goods and services is better than the market. Basically sidestepping Hayek's main criticisms of socialism. Your faith in AI is noted. As a developer of AI, I don't think this is true at all. (Most) AIs are just really complex optimization functions... and that happens to be what the market is as well. The advantage of an AI is that it can optimize over other things than monetary value... but then we get into the question of how we measure the goodness of a distribution. Clearly monetary value has problems (for instance, it leads to people producing strawberries in the middle of winter), but what is a better alternative? AIs won't help you answer that, as it's a problem of what we value as society, not of optimization. I am not saying that AIs will tell us what to value, but you said yourself that they are “complex optimization functions.” Given some human mandate it is entirely plausible that we will have AIs better at optimizing the distribution of certain goods than markets. That’s not a “faith” in AI, it’s simply an observation with caveats. One of the main liberal criticisms of socialism is that the market is a better way of organizing productive capacity than any kind of centralized planning. I am saying maybe so with humans alone, but you can imagine networks organized by AI that might be even better, because AI capacity for optimization greatly enhances the focus and power of self-organizers who lack institutional support. Imagine AI helping organize a local homeowner power grid for solar, or even a lawn mowing service. Think distributed computing but put towards real-life goods and services that have high individual transaction costs but also higher returns the larger the network. Basically a more optimized socialism, that lends itself to syndicalist community organizing.
An AI might do a better job at organizing a local power grid to incorporate solar than our current utility companies do, but we don't really need an AI to do better. If you look at the Netherlands, power grids are mostly ready for any amount of solar power homeowners might put up. I don't know if the companies used any AI to guide their placement of transformers, etc. (I wouldn't be surprised to learn they did), but the idea here is that someone needs to tell the AI what to do, and it happily optimizes that function within the given parameters. I know that AIs are used in optimizing the Dutch train schedules (I know the professor that helps with that project personally). But this is all within the scope of "if we do this, we make more money".
I think the closest example I can think of is what my brother talked about: he's getting very serious about sustainable farming (as a professional, not just as a consumer of food), and in particular sustainable soil usage. Apparently there are 5 principal things you need to look at for soil usage (I don't remember the details, sorry), and there has been a massive European project to map actual measurements of things like ground water, soil type, nutrients, usage, etc. from all countries. The application of most interest to this discussion is that they built a system for policy makers to incentivize "optimal" use of land in Europe. For instance, it could be a good idea to use farmland in southern Spain to stop farming it and plant more natural cover that can help combat desertification... and instead intensify production in northern Europe where climate change is actually causing an improvement in farming conditions. The next step is for the policy makers to come up with incentive programs to stimulate local farmers to do this. E.g. subsidize "unused" farmland in southern Spain if it is managed according to best practices for carbon capture and biodiversity (I am pulling this one out of my ass). In this way the AI is "planning" our agriculture without looking at optimizing profit.
Of course, the way this system is actually being used is mainly to improve the competitive situation of farmers in Europe... so monetizing it. But it *could* be used to improve the sustainablity of soil usage (and the researchers working on it seem to have had that in mind when designing it). And fairness dictates that I do say that some people within the EC are actually worried about the future of farming rather than how to make a quick buck now, so not all is lost yet.
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On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute
It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
On January 17 2020 16:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should) The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart.
Carbon offsetting isn’t cutting your actual emissions and is fraught with other problems, as was outlined in said article.
It’s kind of like pledging to build another house for every one you knock down.
Plus it only takes one political change to potentially offset your offsets hugely, so the net effect is outright bad. In current year it’s Bolsonaro opening up previously protected areas of the Amazon to commercial logging.
That alone has probably wiped out all the tree-planting endeavours of well-meaning tree planting projects by various companies and charities.
On the other hand Microsoft’s specific proposals seem to include all sorts of other things, plus money into carbon capture technology which is all pretty positive.
We’re probably going to fail horrendously in preventing some kind of climate catastrophe, my hope now is we’ll develop the tech to reverse some of the damage rather than in prevention.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
On January 17 2020 16:42 ShambhalaWar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 07:57 JimmiC wrote:
What he is saying (and feel free to correct me if I have misinterpreted) is that the problem is not a mysterious group of the "capitalist class" the problem is all of us and our mind set and day to day decisions. That we need to find a way to bring environmental concerns to be peoples number one concern instead of how much money they make and stuff they can get.
And this is the issues with all populists no matter where they are on the spectrum there is no simple solutions to extremely complex problems it is not the capital class, the Jews, the immigrants, the sinners, the Christians, the Muslims, or whatever other ones there are. It is all of us and so far all the systems that have been piloted in the real world all end up the same way unless there is enough checks and balances. So far we have needed private business and citizens to check government and government to check private businesses and citizens.
I would love if you would get into the moving it more part, because that is the tricky part. I think social democracy has been shown to be a pretty darn good system and why I think Bernie could do a lot of good in the states. But until you get the courage to actually explain what you mean by moving more and actually get into the details and be willing to hear some of the flaws it is going to continue to sound like a fairy tale of a populist. It's not the "capitalist class" as much as capitalism producing a situation in which people consolidate too much power, which is where we currently are. A small amount of people have consolidated the vast majority of power. In this situation it doesn't matter what majority of people "prioritize," because through the levers of money and power, the "power class" can stifle the growth/progress/best-interest of everyone else... in order to maintain their grip on power. Look at Greta T. and her speaking out at DAVOS, despite her words and pleas, the people with power ignore her... because money and the system of capitalism has afforded them the ability to skew wealth inequality so far in one direction. Look at the laws around guns in the US. Polling shows that they vast majority of people want gun laws to be changed in favor of more regulation, but nothing has happened after an insane amount of death and mass shooting. This is because people with money/power have lobbied for the halt of any progress on the issue, which is because it threatens their power. In capitalism the good of the many is ignored and stifled by the powerful few, and this is the world we live in now. If power was spread more evenly, the priority of the many could be enacted. *Instead, now the priority of the many is already climate change, but nothing can happen because the powerful push a false narrative (climate change is fake)... and you end up with Australia burning to the ground. The way I hear N. is that you need to change the system we exist in to create fertile ground for change to occur... otherwise the system itself holds back any possibility of progress.... Like trying to grow a cactus in a lush forest.
Indeed. I don’t really begrudge billionaires as humans unless they’re massive pricks.
I don’t believe it’s purely a case of too much wealth in a purely moral sense, I think it’s actually too much wealth for a human to mentally process.
In the same crude sense as humans have a limit of people they can bond with to any appreciable degree, which if I recall varies from 150-300 people.
There’s probably a cutoff in a wealth sense where it just becomes a number on a spreadsheet. Not exactly the spirit of the quote but Stalin was on to something with ‘one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.’
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On January 17 2020 22:17 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation.
How does that square with your earlier theory that GH has no ideas and that when he's questioned he waits for me to give an answer so that he can say it's his answer?
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On January 17 2020 16:42 ShambhalaWar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2020 07:57 JimmiC wrote:
What he is saying (and feel free to correct me if I have misinterpreted) is that the problem is not a mysterious group of the "capitalist class" the problem is all of us and our mind set and day to day decisions. That we need to find a way to bring environmental concerns to be peoples number one concern instead of how much money they make and stuff they can get.
And this is the issues with all populists no matter where they are on the spectrum there is no simple solutions to extremely complex problems it is not the capital class, the Jews, the immigrants, the sinners, the Christians, the Muslims, or whatever other ones there are. It is all of us and so far all the systems that have been piloted in the real world all end up the same way unless there is enough checks and balances. So far we have needed private business and citizens to check government and government to check private businesses and citizens.
I would love if you would get into the moving it more part, because that is the tricky part. I think social democracy has been shown to be a pretty darn good system and why I think Bernie could do a lot of good in the states. But until you get the courage to actually explain what you mean by moving more and actually get into the details and be willing to hear some of the flaws it is going to continue to sound like a fairy tale of a populist. It's not the "capitalist class" as much as capitalism producing a situation in which people consolidate too much power, which is where we currently are. A small amount of people have consolidated the vast majority of power. In this situation it doesn't matter what majority of people "prioritize," because through the levers of money and power, the "power class" can stifle the growth/progress/best-interest of everyone else... in order to maintain their grip on power. Look at Greta T. and her speaking out at DAVOS, despite her words and pleas, the people with power ignore her... because money and the system of capitalism has afforded them the ability to skew wealth inequality so far in one direction. Look at the laws around guns in the US. Polling shows that they vast majority of people want gun laws to be changed in favor of more regulation, but nothing has happened after an insane amount of death and mass shooting. This is because people with money/power have lobbied for the halt of any progress on the issue, which is because it threatens their power. In capitalism the good of the many is ignored and stifled by the powerful few, and this is the world we live in now. If power was spread more evenly, the priority of the many could be enacted. *Instead, now the priority of the many is already climate change, but nothing can happen because the powerful push a false narrative (climate change is fake)... and you end up with Australia burning to the ground. The way I hear N. is that you need to change the system we exist in to create fertile ground for change to occur... otherwise the system itself holds back any possibility of progress.... Like trying to grow a cactus in a lush forest.
Good post, yes.
Another thing the system does is that it modifies our perception of change. The only change that seems possible is one that comes from above, from those that have this power. Climate change will be solved by Elon Musk finding a way to send CO2 on Mars or whatever. This is problematic because it also limits our perception of change only to solutions that ensure that everybody wins (or at least that those have enough power to enact the change don't lose), and in a situation where some people are where they are because they are stepping on others, it's impossible to create a satisfactory system without handing a loss to the people who are doing the stepping. This goes a bit beyond climate change but not always; there's no way that the system that beats climate change creates as much wealth for the people who make billions off of oil, for example.
But this is where you should be reading Anand Giridharadas rather than me, he's a cool dude.
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On January 17 2020 22:39 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 22:17 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation. How does that square with your earlier theory that GH has no ideas and that when he's questioned he waits for me to give an answer so that he can say it's his answer? Part and parcel. Not mutually exclusive. Nobody answers for me. I don't see why you would doggedly answer for GH. Let GH answer for himself. And you don't need to talk like him either. This capitalism is the root of all evil schtick is getting old. Develop your own way of speech.
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On January 17 2020 23:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 22:39 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 22:17 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation. How does that square with your earlier theory that GH has no ideas and that when he's questioned he waits for me to give an answer so that he can say it's his answer? Part and parcel. Not mutually exclusive. Nobody answers for me. I don't see why you would doggedly answer for GH. Let GH answer for himself. And you don't need to talk like him either. This capitalism is the root of all evil schtick is getting old. Develop your own way of speech.
If you were right more often I'd answer for you more 
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On January 17 2020 22:17 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 16:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should) The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart. Carbon offsetting isn’t cutting your actual emissions and is fraught with other problems, as was outlined in said article. It’s kind of like pledging to build another house for every one you knock down. Plus it only takes one political change to potentially offset your offsets hugely, so the net effect is outright bad. In current year it’s Bolsonaro opening up previously protected areas of the Amazon to commercial logging. That alone has probably wiped out all the tree-planting endeavours of well-meaning tree planting projects by various companies and charities. On the other hand Microsoft’s specific proposals seem to include all sorts of other things, plus money into carbon capture technology which is all pretty positive. We’re probably going to fail horrendously in preventing some kind of climate catastrophe, my hope now is we’ll develop the tech to reverse some of the damage rather than in prevention.
The point I was making was that nothing you can say that is positive about what is being done, is good enough for some people. There will never be anything good enough. It tiresome to read the same stuff over and over.
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On January 18 2020 00:13 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 22:17 Wombat_NI wrote:On January 17 2020 16:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should) The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart. Carbon offsetting isn’t cutting your actual emissions and is fraught with other problems, as was outlined in said article. It’s kind of like pledging to build another house for every one you knock down. Plus it only takes one political change to potentially offset your offsets hugely, so the net effect is outright bad. In current year it’s Bolsonaro opening up previously protected areas of the Amazon to commercial logging. That alone has probably wiped out all the tree-planting endeavours of well-meaning tree planting projects by various companies and charities. On the other hand Microsoft’s specific proposals seem to include all sorts of other things, plus money into carbon capture technology which is all pretty positive. We’re probably going to fail horrendously in preventing some kind of climate catastrophe, my hope now is we’ll develop the tech to reverse some of the damage rather than in prevention. The point I was making was that nothing you can say that is positive about what is being done, is good enough for some people. There will never be anything good enough. It tiresome to read the same stuff over and over.
That's just factually not true. We have different ideas of what positive is. What I find tiresome is you JimmiC and DMCD reliably whining about practically every post I make.
Not as in "here's why that idea falls short of what you seem to believe it means" or something like I'm suggesting with carbon offset projects and the lingering specter of capitalism. Just whining and I wish more people would say something at this point.
This:
On January 17 2020 22:17 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation.
Is an example of the type of ridiculousness.
EDIT: The irony is that Neb and I, through public discussion in this thread have a pretty good grasp of our political differences, but folks like DMCD have no clue or attribute Neb's views to mine (he was socialist before I was iirc). He's not speaking for me, really he's demonstrating his superior patience with assaults on socialist ideas, even those that are completely unable to engage with some basic textbook understanding of socialist ideas comparable to a junior high level of understanding of capitalism.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
On January 17 2020 23:25 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 22:39 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 22:17 Dangermousecatdog wrote:On January 17 2020 05:48 Nebuchad wrote:On January 17 2020 05:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On January 17 2020 05:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There's a single sentence quoted there, mini-GH, why do you even need to ask what is the propaganda? Maybe this is a stupid question, but, why "mini"? I am small and cute It is because you are small and cute indeed. Overtime, you ended up copying GH mannerisms and so is indistinguishable. You look up to big bro GH so much you've ended up repeating whatever he says ad nauseum word for word. You interject whenever someone argues with GH. GH is a big boy. He doesn't need you to answer for him and attack the other person whenever someone wants to talk with GH. Case in point the above conversation. How does that square with your earlier theory that GH has no ideas and that when he's questioned he waits for me to give an answer so that he can say it's his answer? Part and parcel. Not mutually exclusive. Nobody answers for me. I don't see why you would doggedly answer for GH. Let GH answer for himself. And you don't need to talk like him either. This capitalism is the root of all evil schtick is getting old. Develop your own way of speech.
People interject to head off the tiresome GH vs the same couple of posters shade-throwing sessions that derail this thread with regularity. Well, can’t speak for anyone other than myself, as well as GH (because the left posters are his fan club obviously).
Do people want to discuss politics or not? For fuck’s sake.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
On January 18 2020 00:13 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2020 22:17 Wombat_NI wrote:On January 17 2020 16:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:54 BerserkSword wrote:On January 17 2020 15:27 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On January 17 2020 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Popular among industry and others are "Carbon offsets". Propublica did some reporting on why they are making things worse. ... the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.
In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.
“Offsets themselves are doing damage,” said Larry Lohmann, who has spent 20 years studying carbon credits
Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits. features.propublica.orgOften used to grab "carbon neutral" or more recently "carbon negative" headlines companies have been turning a blind eye to the well documented failure of carbon offset programs. Much like recycling in the US, there are auxiliary benefits, but carbon offsets are essentially another form of wishcycling. It's long so just a couple more excerpts: In 2015, a French research center examined 120 projects and found that 37% overlapped with existing protected lands like national parks. Though offsets require an added benefit, the authors concluded REDD was simply layered onto existing conservation plans, reducing it to a “logo to attract financing.”
Then, there are the findings out of Norway, a major exporter of oil and natural gas and the world’s largest supporter of REDD, representing about half of all funding.
Tucked into a little-noticed report published last year by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General was the revelation that the country’s efforts had failed virtually every test More specifically it's another corrupt arm of industry with some unfortunate scientists/activists shoestringing the best they can out of the scraps they get for their efforts. In effect it's a counterproductive PR stunt with some incidental benefits. Welp, you all heard it here first. There is literally nothing that the US and her companies can do to make life better. It's all just a rouse to increase profits and screw over the world. Great ending to the last few pages. RIP. As much as I disagree with his positions on climate change, that's not what he really said. Make no mistake - Microsoft is doing this to get its shareholders more money. That is the nature of a business, especially a trillion+ dollar market cap mega corporation like Microsoft. If they did not envision this maneuver fattening the wallets of shareholders, they would not have announced it. Their intent is not necessarily to screw over the world, unless you can provide evidence that Microsoft is an evil corporation bent on fucking the world over. He just pointed otu that there is evidence that suggests that these kinds of maneuvers rarely pan out in terms of the enivornmental goal, and that companies put profit above all else (as they should) The issue is that no matter how small or grand the gesture, it isn't enough. He will find a way to make any little progress, any sense that will get people to think and act on changing the environment, into some spin. Microsoft announces they're going "carbon negative"? GH is here to let you know that it's a scam to fatten the capitalists pockets and not do enough for the environment. JimmiC and others share some kind of recycling news with tech that might help locally and hopefully, on a larger scale? Not enough and too little too late for the environment at large. His entire gimmick is doom and gloom. Take a piece of positive news and let it remain positive. He's the guy who has to renounce the hero in movies because the villain was right all along. He's probably a Thanos sympathizer at heart. Carbon offsetting isn’t cutting your actual emissions and is fraught with other problems, as was outlined in said article. It’s kind of like pledging to build another house for every one you knock down. Plus it only takes one political change to potentially offset your offsets hugely, so the net effect is outright bad. In current year it’s Bolsonaro opening up previously protected areas of the Amazon to commercial logging. That alone has probably wiped out all the tree-planting endeavours of well-meaning tree planting projects by various companies and charities. On the other hand Microsoft’s specific proposals seem to include all sorts of other things, plus money into carbon capture technology which is all pretty positive. We’re probably going to fail horrendously in preventing some kind of climate catastrophe, my hope now is we’ll develop the tech to reverse some of the damage rather than in prevention. The point I was making was that nothing you can say that is positive about what is being done, is good enough for some people. There will never be anything good enough. It tiresome to read the same stuff over and over.
There’s plenty that would be good enough, it just has to be good enough to be meaningful. Which I’m not sure it will be.
15-20 years ago something like this would have been overwhelmingly positive, a blue chip company taking the lead and influencing industry at large.
That’s not to mention the elephant in the room which is outright cutting consumption, of resources which are notable by their absence when companies go on about their green credentials.
It’s not as if people take particular pleasure in this. When I’m in my retirement home and I spot through my cataracts a giant tidal wave approaching I’m not going to sit back smugly in my rocking chair and say ‘I told youse me and that Green Horizons fella were right’
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EPT
