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Do any of you pay for carbon offsets? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Of course, it's better to emit less carbon, and support systems and policies that emit less carbon. That said, carbon emission is unavoidable, and I'd like to minimize that portion of my impact as much as possible.

I am definitely willing to pay to offset my carbon usage, but I'm under the impression that this is mostly a scam. Does anyone use these services? If so, can you tell me what reasoning or sources you used that satisfied you that the service your chose isn't a scam?

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[–] thoralf@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Fair enough!

The problem is: Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, it’s there. It does damage. No money in the world will undo that, unless we build massive factories that extract CO2 from the atmosphere and make coal- or oil-like stuff that we put back in the earth. At the same moment your consumption blasts CO2 out in the atmosphere.

That does not exist. There is no system in place (except for some small but ludicrously expensive labs) that could do that.

Planting trees (or something similar) might help in a few decades, if the trees are still alive then and not being harvested. Until then the CO2 is in the atmosphere, doing its damage. Every day, every minute, every second.