YIKES, that’s probably not the article I would reference when trying to introduce people to the social cost of carbon - it’s full on fossil fuel industry propaganda, you may want to give it a read.
Also, the $200/t is an estimate of the societal cost of emitting carbon, not the cost of avoiding or removing carbon. There’s plenty of ways avoidance/offsets/removal programs that can decrease global emissions for a fraction of that price - it just sets the upper end of what is (for better or worse) a “good deal” for the economy. I.e., if it costs more than $200/t to avoid emitting, it’s better for the economy to just let the planet burn.
Agreed that today’s carbon “offsets” are cheap because they’re garbage, and good offsets are and should be more expensive, but they don’t have to be $200/ton to be effective, they just have to be under that much in order to be better than dealing with their consequences.
Oh wow, thanks for pointing that out, an oversight on my part. I replaced the link, but damn it’s hard to find good sources about this. EPA website is very technical and not much I could find breaking it down well that was not industry-funded.
And yeah there’s other ways to look at spending money to offset emissions that are hard to reduce, like air travel. I figure this gets people thinking in different ways and these charities could use the funds.
YIKES, that’s probably not the article I would reference when trying to introduce people to the social cost of carbon - it’s full on fossil fuel industry propaganda, you may want to give it a read.
Also, the $200/t is an estimate of the societal cost of emitting carbon, not the cost of avoiding or removing carbon. There’s plenty of ways avoidance/offsets/removal programs that can decrease global emissions for a fraction of that price - it just sets the upper end of what is (for better or worse) a “good deal” for the economy. I.e., if it costs more than $200/t to avoid emitting, it’s better for the economy to just let the planet burn.
Agreed that today’s carbon “offsets” are cheap because they’re garbage, and good offsets are and should be more expensive, but they don’t have to be $200/ton to be effective, they just have to be under that much in order to be better than dealing with their consequences.
Oh wow, thanks for pointing that out, an oversight on my part. I replaced the link, but damn it’s hard to find good sources about this. EPA website is very technical and not much I could find breaking it down well that was not industry-funded.
And yeah there’s other ways to look at spending money to offset emissions that are hard to reduce, like air travel. I figure this gets people thinking in different ways and these charities could use the funds.