This isn’t a great metaphor. My dog is a singular individual and another dog isn’t my dog, so you can’t represent it with numbers. A carbon molecule is equivalent to another carbon molecule and can be abstracted.
That said, carbon credits sure seems like making up numbers to make something bad look better, just not in this way.
Except one CO2 molecule trapped in a stable environment, like underground coal, or natural oil reserve, is absolutely not equivalent to some other CO2 molecule in a far less stable environment, like artificially replanted forests.
I actually liked my dog metaphor specifically because of just like one dog isn’t comparable to another, the carbon trade is turning stable CO2 into CO2 that might be released back into the atmosphere fairly quickly
I mean… okay. What if I took a $1 bill from you and replaced with 4 quarters? Would that be “money neutral”? These metaphors aren’t really clearing up my confusion.
Does the EU want carbon neutral to mean “zero carbon emitted during manufacturing/shipping/etc”?
If so, that’s fine and clears up my confusion.
I just think a “zero carbon” moniker would make more sense than “carbon neutral” which (at least to me) infers some kind of offset.
I think the BEUC reaction came from the product itself not being carbon neutral. Apple paid for credits to “offset” the carbon released in production, but that carbon is still released in production. Also where they invested to get said credits is a timber plantation for making pulp, not a great carbon capture project.
To return to simile, it’s like labeling a product as non-toxic because the toxins only release after a few years.
The other person infers an offset from the term “carbon neutral,” which they wouldn’t infer from “zero carbon.”
The point about the timber plantation would support this not really counting as an offset, but I don’t know how they calculate that. If the lumber for the pulp would otherwise have come from wild forests, I could see it, but I suspect they wouldn’t. The timber plantation has just figured out a very shrewd way to get paid to sow their own product. Frankly, I think that should be fraud unless they can prove a ratio between trees planted as offsets and wild trees not felled, but I don’t know if that would incentivize them more to maintain loggers in natural forests, which is obviously worse. Maybe logging operations shouldn’t be eligible for carbon offsets regardless of how they’re substantiated?
Not every CO2 “storage” is as stable as another one.
The way CO2 output is “negated” is usually with poor, short term storage, that won’t actually help for climate change, in exchange for extracting extremely stable CO2 sources like petrol or coal
I’m not arguing that offsets are “okay” but they are what I have always understood the term “carbon neutral” to mean. I don’t think very many people understood what I wrote 🤷♂️
If I kill your dog but give you a new one I don’t think I could be described as “dog neutral”
This isn’t a great metaphor. My dog is a singular individual and another dog isn’t my dog, so you can’t represent it with numbers. A carbon molecule is equivalent to another carbon molecule and can be abstracted.
That said, carbon credits sure seems like making up numbers to make something bad look better, just not in this way.
Except one CO2 molecule trapped in a stable environment, like underground coal, or natural oil reserve, is absolutely not equivalent to some other CO2 molecule in a far less stable environment, like artificially replanted forests.
I actually liked my dog metaphor specifically because of just like one dog isn’t comparable to another, the carbon trade is turning stable CO2 into CO2 that might be released back into the atmosphere fairly quickly
I mean… okay. What if I took a $1 bill from you and replaced with 4 quarters? Would that be “money neutral”? These metaphors aren’t really clearing up my confusion.
Does the EU want carbon neutral to mean “zero carbon emitted during manufacturing/shipping/etc”?
If so, that’s fine and clears up my confusion.
I just think a “zero carbon” moniker would make more sense than “carbon neutral” which (at least to me) infers some kind of offset.
I think the BEUC reaction came from the product itself not being carbon neutral. Apple paid for credits to “offset” the carbon released in production, but that carbon is still released in production. Also where they invested to get said credits is a timber plantation for making pulp, not a great carbon capture project.
To return to simile, it’s like labeling a product as non-toxic because the toxins only release after a few years.
The other person infers an offset from the term “carbon neutral,” which they wouldn’t infer from “zero carbon.”
The point about the timber plantation would support this not really counting as an offset, but I don’t know how they calculate that. If the lumber for the pulp would otherwise have come from wild forests, I could see it, but I suspect they wouldn’t. The timber plantation has just figured out a very shrewd way to get paid to sow their own product. Frankly, I think that should be fraud unless they can prove a ratio between trees planted as offsets and wild trees not felled, but I don’t know if that would incentivize them more to maintain loggers in natural forests, which is obviously worse. Maybe logging operations shouldn’t be eligible for carbon offsets regardless of how they’re substantiated?
Not every CO2 “storage” is as stable as another one.
The way CO2 output is “negated” is usually with poor, short term storage, that won’t actually help for climate change, in exchange for extracting extremely stable CO2 sources like petrol or coal
I’m not arguing that offsets are “okay” but they are what I have always understood the term “carbon neutral” to mean. I don’t think very many people understood what I wrote 🤷♂️