Only a handful of countries have carbon offset policies. It’s mostly corporations “volunteering” for a carbon offset program as part of a greenwashing campaign. The whole thing can work in theory, but a lot of these programs are way too cheap for the current state of carbon capture technology.
That’s if they’re even bothering to implement a real solution at all. They may be planting trees only to pull them up again in a year and start fresh, but count 30 years of expected carbon capture for both sets. Trees aren’t even the best carbon sink to begin with, but people like trees. That, in turn, makes them all the better for greenwashing. Cheap, get to count the same grove multiple times, and looks good for marketing. Tanks of algae are ugly, but they would work far better at this job.
All this said, I think threads like this give people the mistaken impression that carbon capture is entirely a scam. We will almost certainly need actual carbon capture to avoid +2C of warming.
Only a handful of countries have carbon offset policies. It’s mostly corporations “volunteering” for a carbon offset program as part of a greenwashing campaign. The whole thing can work in theory, but a lot of these programs are way too cheap for the current state of carbon capture technology.
That’s if they’re even bothering to implement a real solution at all. They may be planting trees only to pull them up again in a year and start fresh, but count 30 years of expected carbon capture for both sets. Trees aren’t even the best carbon sink to begin with, but people like trees. That, in turn, makes them all the better for greenwashing. Cheap, get to count the same grove multiple times, and looks good for marketing. Tanks of algae are ugly, but they would work far better at this job.
All this said, I think threads like this give people the mistaken impression that carbon capture is entirely a scam. We will almost certainly need actual carbon capture to avoid +2C of warming.