this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Edit: A lot of people seem to have no idea what carbon offsets are. Here's a reasonably quick rundown:
https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/carbon-offsets#:~:text=Carbon%20offsets%20fund%20specific%20projects,and%20waste%20and%20landfill%20management.
Basically though, they are tge best market solution we have thus far yo the climate crisis. We need government to do better but in that absence, this is the closest we hve to a free market solution. While appealing, solutions like "bitching online that people should just go back to pre industrial era lives" or "hoping everyone will just vote correctly next time" are definitely fun solutions, carbon offsets have the effect of actually doing stuff in the meantime.
If we're crucifying people for things they are expected to have, are you pure evil because the phone youbhad undoubtedly used cobalt mined by children who occasionally lose their arns mining it?
A cursory google search showed that she paid double her carbon offsets for the current tour. While imperfect, carbon offsets, and people voluntarily paying into them is how we move through and past our current carbon intensive lifestyle.
Reality should be reality, regardless of the subject.
Edit: At least 9 people disagree but so far, the closest to a substantive reply is essentially "she's rich, why do you care?"
I dunno, read again?
I explained things pretty well in my original post. If you have questions or trouble understanding, I'd be happy to explain.
I listened to her music voluntarily for the first time earlier this year, not my style.
That being said, paying into a carbon offset is the best way to advance a regime that actually transitions us to a green economy.
Are you a vegan who doesn't have a car and won't have children? That's the best way to reduce your emissions. If not, are you as similarly unethical? And if it's a scale issue, given the fact she makes so many people happy as evidenced by their willingness to pay seemingly infinite dollars to see her, well, I'm curious as to whether you feel you think you make a fraction of as many people happy?
It's easy to pile upon the rich but compared to most of the world, you are the Taylor Swift of the world. So these "no no, she costs a thousand times more!" Arguments don't really hold, medium income westerner is responsible for a boatload more emissions than a poor third worlder, so why shouldn't you be held to a similar nonsensical standard? At least Swift is contributing to the things that help us, what similar contributions have you made?
holy shit
According to the folks above, that depends on how much you fly?
Bullshit. Carbon offsets is mostly a scam where polluters "offset" real emissions with potential if not purely theoretical mitigation. The reforestation that companies claim offset their emissions would fill more land than there is on earth in total.
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry, to name the worst problem humanity has, is emitting MORE than ever while using the Carbon Offsets scam to greenwash their killing millions of people a year while being the main cause of climate change.
The best solution is, has always been and always will be to emit less pollutants.
Literally all your complaints call for better regulation rather than abandonment of the carbon offset program... Such regulation being enabled by, you guessed it, high profile folks buying in!
Yes, no emissions would be better but until we're willing to chastise everyone for not eating vegan, it seems pretty silly to get annoyed for someone who contributes less to climate change than say, a mcdonalds.
Enough with the "your point is only valid if it's 100% and mine's valid if it's 0.1%" bullshit.
You just want to pretend that the scam is working and will work more if it's expanded rather than do what every single scientist with expertise in relevant areas and without tons of conflicts of interest say is the only real solution.
Which one of your complaints wasn't about how a carbon offset system should be implemented rather than the notion itself is bad?
To say that it carbon offsets can be gamed and thus the entire system is awful is a little silly. It's sort of like saying "too many people cheat on their taxes, we shouldn't have taxes!" Instead of, y'know, better regulation and enforcement.
In this case, you have one of the most PR savvy people on Earth, I'd be surprised if her team didn't find a legit carbon offset (which is exactly how we say, compensate farmers for not burning the amazon for the lucrative farmland etc.)
As for the only real solution, if you've been paying attention, you'll note most of those scientists have for years suggested a carbon tax as a way to transition to net zero. Well, in the face of government inaction, carbon offsets are the free market filling the gap in the meantime. Are they imperfect? Absolutely! But are programs like this how we fund and develop the transition to net zero? Also absolutely!
The system is designed to be gamed, it's working as intended. It's a complete bullshit sham that isn't doing a single thing for the climate
Here's a list of projects from just my province.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/public-sector/offset-portfolio
They include implementing new technologies which would otherwise not be cost effective for companies, upgrading older technologies before their phase out date or just interesting projects like diverting methane from landfills to be used as natural gas.
So basically they get to pollute as much as they want so long as they pay, rather than just forcing them to implement these "non cost effective solutions"
Im sure the money goes to good things but it just seems like an inefficient solution. We should be punishing companies for their pollution, not encouraging them to pollute as much as they want so long as they pay their dues
I strongly recommend reading about carbon taxes. They're pretty much unanimously supported in the scientific community as how to develop and implement the tech we need to get through to a zero emissions world.
Carbon offsets are as close as we currently have to such a plan right now. While imperfect, they are a start in the right direction and are already helping to fund the projects we need to fund.
Ironically, these schemes are some of the most efficient. By putting a price on carbon, we allow all corners of the free market to innovate and find solutions.
Government can't just snap its fingers and create new carbon sequestration technology. Nor is it the best positioned to assess which new technologies are going to be the right fit for which job. (Unless you want to vastly expand and fund the civil service.)
If some company is willing to fund the green revolution, have at it. Unless you have a scheme to convince everyone to stop eating beef, flying and driving, putting a price on carbon is generally the agreed upon best solution.
Well if you really start looking into it, carbon offsets are mostly a scam.
For instance just declaring: "I will cut down this forest" without ever having the intention to do so, and then not doing it counts as a carbon offset. This is what abgreat part of companies are doing. Just saving forests that nobody wanted to cut down in the first place from being cut down. This they then sell to the consumer as a carbon offset.
John Oliver had a great segment on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0
Ahhhh, the John Oliver effect. I knew there was a reason people were furious without quite being able to articulate well!
If you pay attention, you'll note that Oliver's problem with carbon offsets is that the system is too easy to game, which is fair!
But to say that means the entire notion of carbon offsets is nonsense is a little silly. It's sort of like saying "too many people cheat on their taxes, we shouldn't have taxes!" Instead of, y'know, better regulation and enforcement.
In this case, you have one of the most PR savvy people on Earth, I'd be surprised if her team didn't find a legit carbon offset (which is exactly how we say, compensate farmers for not burning the amazon for the lucrative farmland etc.)
I didn’t know you could pay money to reverse the damage you have personally caused to the climate crisis
You can't. But in the real world, we aren't going to stop using planes, cars and heaters in the next few months.
The best thing that aids a transition are carbon offsets that help subsidize the very technology upon which a Green revolution depends.
Ironically inconvenient truths for the armchair environmentalists.
Besides, I suspect if one gave them all a winning lottery ticket we could observe how quickly their attitudes change.
Nevertheless I could think of probably hundreds of individuals far less ethical and far more responsible for global catastrophe in this day than Swift. So as far as billionaires go, she's not all that bad. Let's perhaps focus more on Musk, Bezos, the Waltons, etc...?
Yeah but hating on those folks wouldn't be as cool as hating on someone the normies like!
.../s
I wouldn't be surprised if this outrage is astrotrufing from righties because they're scared how powerful Swift is in mobilizing Voter registration for the left.
Someone else pointed out there was a John Oliver segment about carbon offsets (in which he pointed out that they aren't well regulated and are subject to abuse.) I think people forgot the specifics and just remember OFFSETS = BAD, rather than the appropriate albeit more nuanced "like most things, these are vulnerable to abuse and should probably be better regulated."
Combine that with hating mainstream pop culture with a chance to condescend and you have a perfect storm of toxicity.
I think people tend to dismiss carbon offsets on the basis that they are a free market solution to a problem that the free market has (mostly) caused. You could maybe blame government for lacking regulation on the free market in like the 19th and early 20th century, but me and I think most people would probably think that's full of shit and kind of kicking the can down the road, foisting the responsibility on the government and not the corporate world for basically no reason, other than that we would expect the corporate world to be a bunch of little scamps or something. I think it would be better off blaming the government for basically just being in a revolving door sort of affair with corporations, but then, I think the answer to that wouldn't be like, dismiss the government in exchange for the free market, but instead more along the lines of, you know, as you've said in response to carbon offsets, more regulations against such things.
And before you come at me for wanting top down government solutions because they're "unrealistic", and also thinking that bottom up political activism is "unrealistic", I dunno, like. If your solution is just kind of to believe in solely the free market, I really wonder what leftism you're doing there, especially if you're bringing up cobalt mines with children losing their arms. That's some iphone venezuela latte level shit, there, that whole deal just seems like nihilism. Like we all get that you can't ethically participate in capitalism, but that's not really a good argument to double down on capitalism and be like "well, if I have to...", because it's seen as "more realistic". By even that logic, it would be better off if most of us just used our excess finance to stop contributing to the climate crisis directly in our own lives, but then I dunno whether or not I can predict your response to that, based on your disdain for cobalt mining. If you don't like electric cars on that same basis, and you don't think top down or bottom up government intervention would be likely to happen, then there's not gonna be many solutions, for you, for getting rid of your own carbon emissions even from a car, outside of maybe a really shitty ebike with lead batteries that probably won't be able to take you 30 miles to your job because we live in a suburban hellscape shithole america, or whatever.
I dunno, I gotta go walk my dog. I think the most obvious solution here is just for her to not like. Fly around in a private jet everywhere. Even trucks, which would probably be the other solution, would make more sense, and for the rare inter-continental flight she could probably just take first class with like, a mask and some sunglasses on, and I dunno if anyone would give two shits about that. There's not really any reason she needs to have a private jet in the first place, so this whole argument is STUPID and DUMB.
Lots to digest here!
I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make in the first paragraph though. Intuitively, I blame corporations but don't fault them. They are behaving in line with their incentives. It is up to government to create incentives that ensure good behaviour. So to me, the real blame does lie with goverments' inability to create and enforce a carbon tax (which is generally the agreed upon best way to transition to a carbon neutral economy.)
I think bottom's up political activism is essential. But also kind of doomed. If those under 35 voted at rates comparable to those over 65 (and yes, that includes in primaries), we'd be approaching the end of Bernie's second term and democrats would be arguing about who was best suited to carry on his legacy.
Not sure what the iphone venezuala comment is? I bring up the cobalt mines simply to say that it is easy for us to forgive our own sins but castigate those wealthier than us. (Also an example of us just being conditioned to shrug and say "that's inevitable." No it fucking isn't! If we as consumers actually cared about real things, like those children, instead of whatever comedian we're policing on twitter or whatever, we would have ethical mines just as we have ethical clothes, ethical foods etc. But, people's morality tends to go right up until those morals would become slightly inconvenient.) To the rural citizens in impoverished nations who are already suffering climate change, our desire for plane fueled vacations seems just as unnecessary as Swift's use of a jet to get to her concerts. In the meantime, paying double the carbon cost to developing the technologies or supporting the agriculture necessary to get us to net zero, well, while there's room for manipulation and badness, it's not the worst thing.
I agree that this whole thing is stupid and dumb. There isn't any reason any of us need planes, to eat meat etc. The things that actually solve this crisis are bottoms up politicial activism rather than whining about a celebrity who is doing their best to offset their carbon emissions and supporting a nascent program that is exactly the type of program that gets us to net zero.
Like we said, stupid and dumb.
I'm not sure what the distinction is, there, between blame, and fault, so, constitute a distinction between those two. I would also blame the government partially, yeah, we're in agreement, but I can also like. If we are seeing the reasons why the corporations are acting out of their own short term self-interest, then I can do the same for government, and basically just find fault with nobody, right? That's the only difference I can really come to, there, is that the corporations have a clear chain of causality as to why they might act that way, and the government's is maybe a little bit more obfuscated, or something, but I can still understand the incentive structure there, so I can't really find fault, if fault is like, who is the cause of all this. I guess I'd fault grug, for making fire, or like, god, or the british, or something along the domino chain there. Probably the british.
Also this, I think it's kind of essential to understand this, and your last paragraph about people whining about a celebrity. A lot of it is kind of this social media cynicism that has consumed everything. You know, can't vote for bernie, have to vote for hillary, because splitting the vote would be bad, so there will only ever be establishment candidates and nothing ever changes at the federal level except on an extremely incremental scale as people vote in local and state level elections, which all tend to have the same problem of fptp systems and the same problem of partisanship. And so it's very easy for people to just look at that, and then either go for damage mitigation, or, depending on how much cynicism they have for lobbied to shit free market liberal dems, or just give up entirely and only focus on local issues and basically damage mitigation on that scale, you know. Can't organize some sort of alternative local system for dealing with any of this shit, without registering as some sort of corporation or nonprofit or co-op, and then you're subject to the same forces that end up fucking everyone else over, even if you can gain traction, so people would rather just volunteer at something that already exists and kind of say they've paid their dues. Anything worthwhile is anti-establishment, and if you're anti-establishment, you will probably get killed or arrested. Or you're just a skateboarder, I guess, which is still pretty sick. Or, MOST things that are worthwhile are anti-establishment, I guess we still have costco.
People usually bring up the whole cobalt mine thing as a "gotcha" moment for like, any level of leftist action. uhhh you're using an iphone so you can't be a moral beacon! you can't have any opinions on what's right or wrong! sort of thing. It's also a mistake of scale, the relative scales at which, say, 71 companies 99% of pollution yadda yadda, it's way different, the level of fault there, compared to like, the person who has a 3 year old iphone SE which was maybe constructed with a lithium cobalt battery from some imperial african child slave mine. Or people obviously bring it up as a way to disparage the adoption of electric cars, usually from the position of "electric cars suck" rather than "we should have better public transit and bike everywhere". I dunno I'd probably set something up that like, increases tariffs on shit like that, or maybe just fund the shit out of the FTC so nestle goes out of business, or whatever, but as an individual consumer there's really not much you can do. It's much easier, or "more realistic", I suppose, for most people to get off their 9 to 5 of shithole labor, and then just like, buy whichever water is the cheapest, buy whatever choccy milk is the cheapest, rather than looking into the rather hard to parse information of which company's using the most child slaves, or what have you. Because they're basically all doing it, and, say, in the case of a car, it's not much like you can live without one. It doesn't even have to be impossible, really, it just has to be extremely difficult, which, in most cases, it is. It's not realistic, in my opinion, to expect everyone to suddenly pivot to like, supporting more ethical companies and voting with their dollar when most people are put upon enough already, and the american economy is fundamentally built so it's like 3 steps away from slave labor, and if any of us did anything different then the economy would crash, the companies would get bailed out, and we'd all be forced to bite the bullet, like what's happened every single time. Not that any of that would necessarily happen but that's kind of the chain of logic of the american mind.
Anyways, I gotta go feed my dog, and also join a CIA honeypot whatsapp group for leftist activism, cya.
The neoliberal levels are through the roof!
As are the childlike "I refuse to acknowledge how to actually make things better but complaining on the internet is free and easy!" Levels.