Hey there & thanks for asking a great question. I don’t have any particularly fresh insights, but I wanted to join in & note that I went through the same thing a couple years ago, and concluded that I should donate a little bit each year offset my emissions.
I generally agree with the calculations leading to the $35 figure above; it does genuinely seem like the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) are extremely effective per dollar. In some sense, no matter who you offset with, you’re always offsetting in expectation—if you’re worried about risk, you should offset at the lower credible bound for effectiveness. But to address your points above, these organisations can only absorb so much funding. The German government couldn’t donate billions of euros a year in a cost-effective way—but you can donate a hundred. So I think it’s not unreasonable for governments to have higher estimates of the long-term per-capita burden of carbon emissions, at the same time as it being possible for your donation to be orders of magnitude cheaper. (In an EA context, compare saving a life via GiveWell against a government saving thousands of lives by building a hospital).
All of this generally assumes offsetting is possible. CO2 emissions are easier, you can plant vegetation which will directly absorb some amount of carbon over its lifecycle. In the CfRN’s case, they save vegetation which preserves its future absorption ability. Other greenhouse cases such as nitrogen have a trickier theory of change; it mostly seems like it’s best to prevent future emissions and wait for the existing gases to decay. And that’s where the CATF come in.
I think I have a bit more of a deontological streak than other EAs, so for me it feels important than I’m not doing any harm myself. I can’t easily make an argument that would suggest a pure utilitarian should donate that ~$35 to carbon offsetting over saving lives. But for me it was cheap enough (the price of a nice dinner, say) that any hand-wringing over it would be a waste of time.
Hi Huw and thanks for sharing your approach towards offsetting.
I am wondering if these 35$ are giving us the impression that being the reason for co2 emissions is ok, as it is so cheap to offset. Shouldn’t we, as people believing in EA, still use higher pricec per ton Co2 to be reminded, that the climate cost per ton are higher currently, and even if we chose to take an effective organisation to offset, it doesn’t mean that we can emmit Co2 without caring?
The point is, emmiting (and therefor offsetting) shouldn’t be “cheap enough”, should it? Shouldn’t we really feel our emmissions (on our bank balance) in order to caring / start caring?
It is $35. You can spend $35 and offset a year’s worth of carbon emissions. It is not the case that ‘the climate cost per ton is higher currently’.
Because it’s so cheap, you can offset CO2 without caring.
If you want to put a mental block on not emitting, you’re welcome to do so, but it would be incorrect to deliberately pay more than the actual cost of offsetting those emissions. (This is what I personally do; I try to avoid emitting because I think it’s generally morally good to not be excessively wasteful, but I am under no illusions that it wouldn’t be very cheap for me to offset it). Frankly, at the end of the day, the biggest emitters in rich countries are industrial organisations and no amount of personal cutting-back is really going to prevent them from changing their behaviour anyway.
Hey there & thanks for asking a great question. I don’t have any particularly fresh insights, but I wanted to join in & note that I went through the same thing a couple years ago, and concluded that I should donate a little bit each year offset my emissions.
I generally agree with the calculations leading to the $35 figure above; it does genuinely seem like the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) are extremely effective per dollar. In some sense, no matter who you offset with, you’re always offsetting in expectation—if you’re worried about risk, you should offset at the lower credible bound for effectiveness. But to address your points above, these organisations can only absorb so much funding. The German government couldn’t donate billions of euros a year in a cost-effective way—but you can donate a hundred. So I think it’s not unreasonable for governments to have higher estimates of the long-term per-capita burden of carbon emissions, at the same time as it being possible for your donation to be orders of magnitude cheaper. (In an EA context, compare saving a life via GiveWell against a government saving thousands of lives by building a hospital).
All of this generally assumes offsetting is possible. CO2 emissions are easier, you can plant vegetation which will directly absorb some amount of carbon over its lifecycle. In the CfRN’s case, they save vegetation which preserves its future absorption ability. Other greenhouse cases such as nitrogen have a trickier theory of change; it mostly seems like it’s best to prevent future emissions and wait for the existing gases to decay. And that’s where the CATF come in.
I think I have a bit more of a deontological streak than other EAs, so for me it feels important than I’m not doing any harm myself. I can’t easily make an argument that would suggest a pure utilitarian should donate that ~$35 to carbon offsetting over saving lives. But for me it was cheap enough (the price of a nice dinner, say) that any hand-wringing over it would be a waste of time.
Hi Huw and thanks for sharing your approach towards offsetting.
I am wondering if these 35$ are giving us the impression that being the reason for co2 emissions is ok, as it is so cheap to offset. Shouldn’t we, as people believing in EA, still use higher pricec per ton Co2 to be reminded, that the climate cost per ton are higher currently, and even if we chose to take an effective organisation to offset, it doesn’t mean that we can emmit Co2 without caring?
The point is, emmiting (and therefor offsetting) shouldn’t be “cheap enough”, should it? Shouldn’t we really feel our emmissions (on our bank balance) in order to caring / start caring?
Two points there:
It is $35. You can spend $35 and offset a year’s worth of carbon emissions. It is not the case that ‘the climate cost per ton is higher currently’.
Because it’s so cheap, you can offset CO2 without caring.
If you want to put a mental block on not emitting, you’re welcome to do so, but it would be incorrect to deliberately pay more than the actual cost of offsetting those emissions. (This is what I personally do; I try to avoid emitting because I think it’s generally morally good to not be excessively wasteful, but I am under no illusions that it wouldn’t be very cheap for me to offset it). Frankly, at the end of the day, the biggest emitters in rich countries are industrial organisations and no amount of personal cutting-back is really going to prevent them from changing their behaviour anyway.