this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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I'm confused on what the EU is going for here. When I read "carbon neutral" I assume that means minimized emissions + carbon offsets.
I'm not sure if "zero carbon" is even a thing but it sounds like that is what EU wants "carbon neutral" to mean?
Carbon credits have been abused all sorts of ways as essentially a license to continue polluting. The EU's current stance is that the credit programs are so fucked in this manner they no longer really count.
Apples current approach of 'everything we can and credit the rest' is still ahead of the majority of the industries position, but not surprising that EU don't accept it as 'zero carbon.'
What the EU would like is for everyone to take responsibility for their own carbon generation throughout the entire supply chain rather than buying credits from greener companies, whether this is realistic or practical is yet to be seen.
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?
Rabin credits are corporate green washing bullshit. Direct action would be better IMO. Plant a fucking Forrest or twelve.
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 🤷♂️
Carbon neutral has to mean carbon neutral, its rather easy. If you can't achieve that then you can't advertise with it.
Okay so does carbon neutral mean “produced without any carbon emissions”?
Yes
An impractical goal might as well be a fantasy.
That seems to be what the EU wants? At least that’s my understanding after all this back and forth 🤷♂️
It just sounds like you don’t know what the word “neutral” means tbh.
Probably something along the lines of "not negative or positive, but in the middle". Basically a synonym for net zero except net zero may account for other GHGs while carbon neutral may only refer explicitly to carbon. If the process releases CO2 at some points and absorbs the same amount of CO2 elsewhere, then it would be net zero or carbon neutral. But if you release carbon that was stored for 100s of millions of years and would have continued to be stored otherwise and then just store that same amount of carbon for 1-5 years, then you aren't really offsetting and aren't really carbon neutral. Given none of the offset programs seem to have presented concrete evidence for long-term storage, they're worthless in this context. I suppose you could fund short-term storage indefinitely, but how could Apple prove that they're going to be able to fund carbon offsets for a watched purchased today in 75 years? If funding a lumber farm program that harvests trees after 15 years, I suppose you could just fund it every 15 years after an item is manufactured indefinitely? But how would a company demonstrate they're going to continue doing that in 75 years?