{"items": [{"author": "Kitty", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894155922", "anchor": "fb-10100127894155922", "service": "fb", "text": "Maybe I don't understand offsets or capture but it doesn't seem that money can really replace not creating those emissions to begin with.", "timestamp": "1576808184"}, {"author": "Ofer", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894155922&reply_comment_id=10100127974210492", "anchor": "fb-10100127894155922_10100127974210492", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It can. One thing money can pay for is to reduce someone else's emissions, for example. That's equivalent to not creating those emissions to begin with. Another thing money can pay for is increasing tree cover, or other plants, which will absorb emissions.", "timestamp": "1576870458"}, {"author": "Alyssa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532", "service": "fb", "text": "Kitty The cost of directly building a machine to take the CO2 out of the air again immediately after the flight is substantially less than the ticket cost. Adding that cost to all tickets would increase prices, but not by such a large amount that it would stop most people from flying.", "timestamp": "1576808317"}, {"author": "Kitty", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127894485262", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127894485262", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Alyssa but wouldn't it be better to take CO2 out of the air AND produce less emissions?", "timestamp": "1576808392"}, {"author": "Alyssa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127895248732", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127895248732", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kitty Spending $200 to build the CO2 removal machine, but also not taking the flight, would effectively be a $200 donation to charity. Donations to charity are good, but realistically, will only ever be a small fraction of the emissions reductions we need.", "timestamp": "1576808833"}, {"author": "Kitty", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127895707812", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127895707812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sure but we don't need a new machine for every flight. I just worry that having offsets will let people think we can continue to consume at the rates we do and everything will be fine.", "timestamp": "1576808995"}, {"author": "Alyssa", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127896097032", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127896097032", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kitty If we have direct carbon capture for everything that we buy, then net CO2 emissions will drop to zero and we will be fine. The increased cost will make consumption drop some, but only a fairly small percentage. Consumption isn't inherently bad, it's only bad when it creates some other harm.", "timestamp": "1576809195"}, {"author": "Henry", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127936875312", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127936875312", "service": "fb", "text": "→ The way \"charity donation\u201d was in that comment implies that donations to charity are merely expressions of support not monies that are put to work. Not trying to stir up that debate though so putting that tangent aside, and choosing to skip over the statement that \"building a machine... substantially less than the ticket cost\" for its assumptions of what DAC looks like and the relative cost of short flights over other means of transportation...
The net zero-based idea would hold were we not already in massive debt. Net zero matters when all locales in the system are stable with respect to whether they could destabilize the system as a whole. Offsets generally and DAC-as-a-way-to-address-flight-emmisions specifically are based on the idea of whole-system nets. The closer that system is to a tipping point the more immediate and local the offset must be, which in a sense is to say that while the net state is of course always the final question it is less and less the measure that really matters.
In the current situation we may have already passed one or more tipping points. Pearce's recent review on Yale Environment 360 is a good summary of that question from the perspective of climate scientists who are more and less worried. I'd add to that the argument that I'm sure someone has written about but for which I don't have a good link: socio-political tipping points: the last couple years alone have seen some people in power do significant environmental damage without much blowback (cf Trump, Bolsonaro). That lack of blowback combined with what those actors perceive as benefits to the sorts of climate change-neglectful decisions they've been making compounds risk metrics for climate scientific tipping points, because it makes those points easier to reach.
Looking at our track record over the last half century or so of repeatedly determining 'climate states were worse then than we thought and accordingly they are worse now than we predicted' it's hard to see room for things to be *better* now than the latest studies find, which means that at very best there's a good chance we're very close to at least one tipping point we're only in the very beginning stages of understanding.
The question as Kitty states is not whether travelers would be stopped by a the cost of a cross-country flight increasing by 50% (and I have to wonder who your \"most people\" are), it's whether the species can afford for people to not mind paying more to fly.", "timestamp": "1576848472"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127937583892", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127937583892", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Henry if someone decides to (a) fly and (b) decrease emissions elsewhere so the net effect is zero, isn't that neutral from a climate perspective? I don't understand where your \"whether the species can afford for people to not mind paying more to fly\" is coming from.", "timestamp": "1576848958"}, {"author": "Kitty", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127937773512", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127937773512", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Because of what I said, we can't be relying on net zero anymore, we need to be actively working toward negative carbon and net zero let's too many consumers \"off the hook\" as it were.", "timestamp": "1576849188"}, {"author": "Kitty", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127937878302", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127937878302", "service": "fb", "text": "→ And we can't wait for things to be at net zero (aka building these things that will supposedly get us there) we need to stop consuming now. Of course the huge polluting corporations do too ... I'm not laying this all at the feet of a regular consumer but still.", "timestamp": "1576849280"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127937963132", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127937963132", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kitty I still don't see how an individual deciding between (a) fly and offset and (b) stay home makes anything worse by choosing (a)", "timestamp": "1576849357"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127938082892", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127938082892", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kitty if you want to argue that individuals have an obligation to spend their time/money in whatever ways most improve the world I'm going to completely agree, but I think that's mostly not going to look like consumption changes", "timestamp": "1576849471"}, {"author": "Henry", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127941975092", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127941975092", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman CO2 doesn't disperse evenly throughout the atmosphere. If CO2 removal happens in a different space from the CO2 addition, there is offset only at the whole-system average. Climate crisis risks are also not evenly distributed across the atmosphere and planet. Adding CO2 in a high risk location and removing it somewhere else is a less meaningful offset the closer the location of addition gets to a crisis point. One crisis in question when we talk about climate crisis is whether this planet will support the sort of living conditions we expect (open air, zero to a couple layers of clothing, etc).
In theory I suppose all eg DAC operations could be placed at the high risk locations, and could be funded by up front investment which would slowly be repayed from ticket price increases. But the many pieces of that coming together feels to me as unrealistic as everyone giving up air travel.
Granted this is getting bigger and bigger picture. I'm all for what I take to be the main point of your post, that factoring environmental costs into the cost of air travel is economically viable and more realistic than dreaming of a world without air travel. Taking issue with Alyssa's stance (though I guess now you're saying it too) that there's fundamentally no difference between doing harm and offsetting it and not doing harm to begin with. And agreeing with Kitty's point that net zero only _sounds_ good because of the word zero; a doctor whose aim it is to make sure sick patients leave their office in the state they arrived us a bad doctor", "timestamp": "1576852349"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127944380272", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127944380272", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Henry could you say more about how it matters where in the world emissions are? I know, for example, that high altitude emissions are worse (and my post accounts for that, using CO2e), but how much does it matter whether carbon is released in, say, Boston vs Mumbai?", "timestamp": "1576854684"}, {"author": "Eva", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127947000022", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127947000022", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think what Kitty was saying (I could be wrong) is that people have limited willingness to fight for the environment or other causes, and if paying carbon offsets helps them feel like they did their part, they won't advocate as strongly for things that might have a larger effect. That sounds like a plausible hypothesis that could be tested, though my prior would be that carbon offsets are still helpful right now.", "timestamp": "1576856464"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127956326332", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127956326332", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Eva I think there's a decent chance that you get the same effect with avoiding travel: people feeling that they've done their part and don't need to do more.", "timestamp": "1576861810"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127963227502", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127963227502", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think we *want* to have a point where people feel like they've done their part.
Imagine being a project manager and you have two options:
A) Point someone at the tools they can use to do a task and describe a clear vision of what it means for them to be \"done\"
B) Tell someone it is urgent for them to \"step it up\" and help with the project more, but don't describe how to tell when they are \"done\".
Which style of leadership will get more results?
As someone with ADHD, I've thought a *lot* about what leads people to spiral indecisively and what motivates people to action. I'm pretty sure its option A.", "timestamp": "1576864988"}, {"author": "Eva", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100127985243382", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100127985243382", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff, I'm not arguing here.", "timestamp": "1576875111"}, {"author": "Henry", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127894350532&reply_comment_id=10100128170931262", "anchor": "fb-10100127894350532_10100128170931262", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's something I'd like to understand better, and I don't have a definitive answer on that particular comparison. The basic idea is that temperature increases in one place can have more catastrophic effects than temperature increases in another place. Damage to a high-biodiversity forest say, compared to damage to a low biodiversity one. Or, differently, melting ice sheets raising sea levels and affecting global sea temps etc etc vs a theoretical localized raise in equatorial sea temperature which could throw things out of whack in the tropics but which on its own might not endanger ice sheets.
Accordingly, increased greenhouse gases in places that exert more of an influence on the temperature in higher risk spots (is that \"over\" ice sheets? somewhere else? I'm not sure) is worse than increased greenhouse gases somewhere else.
Of course the planet/atmosphere is a system, and in normal circumstances things aren't tenuous enough for these differences \u2014which I guess are short duration\u2014 to matter. And of course right now I'm not finding great links! Here's an interesting video of uneven CO/CO2 distribution https://youtu.be/syU1rRCp7E8 and here's a very rough chart-kinda-on-a-map https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
How this all fits exactly with air travel I haven't seen anything on. After all you aren't flying in loops around Antarctica. But plenty of flights go over the northern Arctic. Would be cool to have the OC-CO2 data mapped against specific emissions sources. You'd think someone would be doing that analysis", "timestamp": "1576968827"}, {"author": "Sindy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127897623972", "anchor": "fb-10100127897623972", "service": "fb", "text": "What are actual demand elasticitirs of flying? (Probably hard to estimate bc there are so many different flights and also different types of travelers.. but there probably exist some estimates.)
Also international flights have much higher climate impact but I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s the breakdown of flights in terms of domestic/international esp the more \u201celastic\u201d (non work?) ones.", "timestamp": "1576809846"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127897623972&reply_comment_id=10100127898152912", "anchor": "fb-10100127897623972_10100127898152912", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sindy there's nothing special about them being international; Boston to London is only 35% more than Boston to LA.", "timestamp": "1576810152"}, {"author": "Sindy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127897623972&reply_comment_id=10100127898212792", "anchor": "fb-10100127897623972_10100127898212792", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ok, I typically fly much longer routes but those are probably outliers in the distribution so I was probably biased in my intuition", "timestamp": "1576810213"}, {"author": "Marcus", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127897623972&reply_comment_id=10100127908477222", "anchor": "fb-10100127897623972_10100127908477222", "service": "fb", "text": "→ International flights tend to have a higher ratio of business class seats which cost more fuel per passenger, even if they're roughly the same distance. A Boston - London flight will often be over half Business and First,, while Boston - SFO will be almost entirely coach, even though the flying times are roughly equivalent. (It's 20% longer in great circle distance, not 35%)
This doesn't change the overall logic particularly, a high carbon tax would affect the upper cabin prices proportionally, but is the main reason why the carbon impact of international travel is higher.", "timestamp": "1576815569"}, {"author": "Sindy", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127898033152", "anchor": "fb-10100127898033152", "service": "fb", "text": "By definition, if *everyone* self imposed a social cost of carbon/flying that reflects the *true* SSC, how much we travel would be such that we reach the socially optimal amount of emission and climate change... (unrealistic for so many reasons including we don\u2019t know the true SSC well, people may have too high discount factors, very few will \u201cself impose\u201d a SSC without a government carbon tax...)", "timestamp": "1576810069"}, {"author": "Sally", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127927633832", "anchor": "fb-10100127927633832", "service": "fb", "text": "Hi Jeff, are there carbon offsetting organizations you particularly rate/ trust? (I usually don't offset because I expect the orgs doing it aren't actually that effective at it, but haven't researched it properly. Feel free to ignore, I can also do my own research ;) )", "timestamp": "1576833420"}, {"author": "Martin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127927633832&reply_comment_id=10100127932913252", "anchor": "fb-10100127927633832_10100127932913252", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sally disclaimer I work at IDinsight and this is in beta, https://www.idinsight.org/givinggreen", "timestamp": "1576843304"}, {"author": "Wolf", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127934290492", "anchor": "fb-10100127934290492", "service": "fb", "text": "Where does carbon capture deposit the carbon and can it scale for all current carbon release?", "timestamp": "1576845652"}, {"author": "Hauke", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127940478092", "anchor": "fb-10100127940478092", "service": "fb", "text": "Johannes Ackva", "timestamp": "1576851380"}, {"author": "Colin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127945038952", "anchor": "fb-10100127945038952", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm seeing in these comments the suggestion that we build machines to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere for a well-established cost per ton. Can anyone provide a link for this? I'm not seeing much by googling, but perhaps my Google-fu is just failing me.", "timestamp": "1576855188"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127945038952&reply_comment_id=10100127947214592", "anchor": "fb-10100127945038952_10100127947214592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Colin if you click through to the blog post you can see sources.", "timestamp": "1576856638"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127945038952&reply_comment_id=10100127947299422", "anchor": "fb-10100127945038952_10100127947299422", "service": "fb", "text": "→ (there are also inline citations in the text I copied to fb)", "timestamp": "1576856682"}, {"author": "Colin", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127945038952&reply_comment_id=10100127979664562", "anchor": "fb-10100127945038952_10100127979664562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ My apologies, the first source was focused on societal cost of carbon and I clearly didn't read carefully enough to see that the second was on direct air capture. Thanks!", "timestamp": "1576872471"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127946865292", "anchor": "fb-10100127946865292", "service": "fb", "text": "Yup", "timestamp": "1576856344"}, {"author": "dmolling", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#stT6zAYkSPdehWAjY", "anchor": "lw-stT6zAYkSPdehWAjY", "service": "lw", "text": "Thanks for doing the math on that! That's really useful information. I was under the impression that flying was a bigger issue than those numbers suggest--I hadn't ever bothered to do the calculation myself. ", "timestamp": 1576861186}, {"author": "Avalon", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127968906122", "anchor": "fb-10100127968906122", "service": "fb", "text": "I wonder if it would be effective to encourage those who can afford it to donate to something like Clean Air Task Force past the point of net-zero offset for flights that they take. If this calculator's estimate is correct, and my upcoming round trip flight from Boston to Dublin via Keflavik is going to release 1.5 tonnes of Co2 into the atmosphere, a theoretical donation of $50 to CATF would avert more than 33 times the amount of CO2 my trip produced.
I'm very much in favor of flying less, and making it easier for ppl who would fly for business or academic purposes to fulfill those obligations remotely. If someone told me that I can't call myself an environmentalist if I fly, however, it would make me very sad for a number of reasons, and I'm not on board (heh) with the \"flight shame\" movement.
https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/", "timestamp": "1576868044"}, {"author": "Darius", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100127978796302", "anchor": "fb-10100127978796302", "service": "fb", "text": "Jonathan Michel Charlotte Siegmann", "timestamp": "1576871951"}, {"author": "MakoYass", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#nqWDLXf3C4tPHQWTu", "anchor": "lw-nqWDLXf3C4tPHQWTu", "service": "lw", "text": "The next question is, why aren't people buying the offsetting? I seem to remembering hearing that it was once an option in most ticket purchase processes, but it must have been an unpopular choice, because the option has disappeared and now offsetting is going to be legally mandated, but apparently the legal mandate does not require enough offsetting to be done (past discussion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XRTiojqqJ3wrFFZAf/can-we-really-prevent-all-warming-for-less-than-10busd-with#EbEWLtgcLQXzHjzCb )", "timestamp": 1576883108}, {"author": "Dean", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100128126245812", "anchor": "fb-10100128126245812", "service": "fb", "text": "Carbon Taxes/Credits whatever you call them are a scam to steal more of your money in return to \"save the planet\". Plain and simple. Secondly, trying to limit or exclude Carbon when humans are a \"Carbon-based\" life form is pretty damn sad and stupid. Earth has been here way before humans did and it'll be here long after. Let's work on not killing & robbing each other first.", "timestamp": "1576947270"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/10100127891885472?comment_id=10100128126245812&reply_comment_id=10100128129434422", "anchor": "fb-10100128126245812_10100128129434422", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Dean: I'm not sure where we disagree on the Carbon Tax argument, so I'll give the quick version and you can point out where you think I go off the rails?
Starting with the industrial revolution, people have been burning large amounts of carbon-based fuel, releasing lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, enough to have a substantial impact on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is causing global average temperatures to rise, and as ice melts will also lead to sea-level rise. Both climate change and sea level rise will be harmful to humans on balance, and especially hurt people in low-lying areas and in areas that will get much less rainfall. When someone chooses to burn fuel and release CO2 they are creating an externality, contributing, very slightly, towards a large harm. By taxing emissions at a level approximating the social harm they cause we internalize this externality, that is we get the people burning the fuel to make a decision based on not just the benefit they get from burning the fuel but also the harm that the emissions will cause to others. Funding things through taxing emissions is much better than other ways of raising the same money, because while most taxes are distortionary (preventing otherwise beneficial trades) emission taxes get people closer to how they would behave if they couldn't push the costs of their pollution off on others.", "timestamp": "1576948709"}, {"author": "Korz", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#6MgfnDWqsrkxQcjR5", "anchor": "lw-6MgfnDWqsrkxQcjR5", "service": "lw", "text": "This argument does make sense and makes me wonder what other reasons there are for me to avoid flying if I accept that the impact of CO2 is solvable without excessive additional costs. What comes up is :Not trusting the bought compensation. [This does not hold up on reflection: Given some research, I am confident that I would find trustworthy organisations such that I could be confident that the social costs are being addressed]The feeling that 'just paying for the costs' is only an excuse and that actually I would be defecting. [This seems to just be caused by my emotions not following the inferential steps needed to realize that 'the harm I inflict' is actually taken care of] Signalling to others the willingness of accepting non-trivial inconveniences when it comes to my behaviour affecting climate. [This aspect seems to be the most important. Even though not flying might not actually be a good way of having a positive influence regarding climate change, it *is* a simple and clear signal that I care about my influence on climate change.]
To conclude, I will update towards 'flying can easily be worth the CO2' and keep an eye out for alternative ways of signaling 'this topic is important to me' ('I do not fly' has the convenient properties of being i) easy to understand, ii) fast to transmit and iii) neither trivial nor too radical).", "timestamp": 1576966946}, {"author": "OwenBiesel", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#jygERQ6PDDRXKGfCx", "anchor": "lw-jygERQ6PDDRXKGfCx", "service": "lw", "text": "One reason the low cost of carbon offsets might not make it feel okay to fly is if you're trying to think about what behaviors and habits would still be acceptable in a society that is already functioning carbon-neutrally. My intuition is that as regulations become stricter and greenhouse-gas-reducing projects need less crowdfunding, carbon offset prices will rise until they equal the cost of capturing and sequestering the CO2, which is on the order of several hundred dollars per tonne. So it's hard to imagine a future in which flying is still okay at prices even close to what they are today.", "timestamp": 1576977307}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#baCWJeFGMbXmNNzCY", "anchor": "lw-baCWJeFGMbXmNNzCY", "service": "lw", "text": "→ If you have another look at the post, I talk about how flying would still make sense in many cases at carbon capture costs.\n", "timestamp": 1576983743}, {"author": "KevinHock", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#Zt3HQPgyiBN2kjT5w", "anchor": "lw-Zt3HQPgyiBN2kjT5w", "service": "lw", "text": "Has there been any discussions of the carbon costs of saving lives? e.g. you save an estimated 100 lives via AMF donations, how much do you need to donate to CATF to offset that? It might help people balance the causes they care about.\n", "timestamp": 1576992083}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#H3vKPKBu2tn66uPtX", "anchor": "lw-H3vKPKBu2tn66uPtX", "service": "lw", "text": "→ In some ways that's the opposite of how I think about it. If you're considering spending money to make the world better, my view is you should spend that money on whatever most improves the world. If you think that is AMF donations, you should just do that. If you think that is carbon offers, or carbon tax advocacy organizations, you should do that instead.\n
The main model I can think of where you should both give to AMF and also buy offsets for it is one where you're trying to promote a norm that everyone should offset the emissions that come from their decisions. I don't think this norm is likely to catch on, and I think a tax is a much better way to implement something similar.\n", "timestamp": 1577017151}, {"author": "KevinHock", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#LtxpPKe3E4faTAhkp", "anchor": "lw-LtxpPKe3E4faTAhkp", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → Thanks for the helpful reply!\n", "timestamp": 1577046835}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#uJJ3vXnhj8ZMYT3PS", "anchor": "lw-uJJ3vXnhj8ZMYT3PS", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → Expanded this into a full post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/offset-norms\n", "timestamp": 1577154187}, {"author": "Tetraspace Grouping", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#GCaxByxDyCdkqkukd", "anchor": "lw-GCaxByxDyCdkqkukd", "service": "lw", "text": "→ Quick estimate: Global average is 4.8 tons per person = $50 additional per year per life saved = ~$1500 total (over 30 additional years of life), so over the course of saving an average person's life the costs if you're buying offsets are the same order as the costs of saving a life via a Givewell charity (~half).
For the people helped by Givewell recommended charities, the additional CO2 emissions are probably lower; among the world's poorest, <1 tons of CO2 per capita per year is pretty common, which is <$300 over a lifetime, about an order of magnitude less than the cost of saving a life.", "timestamp": 1577018442}, {"author": "jkaufman", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#oCbaDJrzQMuZE7Ab2", "anchor": "lw-oCbaDJrzQMuZE7Ab2", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → It sounds like you're assuming that averting the death of a child means there will be an additional person in expectation? Instead it looks more like parents have a target number of kids: https://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/04/16/the-mortality-fertility-link/\n", "timestamp": 1577020209}, {"author": "KevinHock", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#PpuQXg4HqmgTBaPWN", "anchor": "lw-PpuQXg4HqmgTBaPWN", "service": "lw", "text": "→ → Thanks for the helpful reply!\n", "timestamp": 1577046855}, {"author": "Jazi Zilber", "source_link": "https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mFeGmtdLLaeHqyxuk#9YbTWmCTPufDax4JG", "anchor": "lw-9YbTWmCTPufDax4JG", "service": "lw", "text": "My 2 cents.\n
Climate is a global problem. Can only be solved by governments - and multiple governments working to solve it.\n
Any private action is a waste of time. And contributes to the illusion that something has been done. Which has a massive negative value.\n
There might be social etc effects of private actions.\n
Solving a global problem by tilting once own nose in some direction is laughable.\n", "timestamp": 1577218753}]}