In Will MacAskill’s book ‘Doing Good Better’ he notes that carbon offsetting is a good option if you’re partaking in activites which are harmful to the environment e.g. flying. In the book, he recommends charity ‘Cool Earth’ as a good place to donate too. Having a quick look around the forum, it appears that this is no longer recommended, see in particular this post.
I fly a few times a year and have began to feel guilty about this, and so I thought that offsetting the carbon from these flights (and other parts of my lifestyle) may be a good way to ‘do my part’ in helping reduce the severity of climate change. But when I started to look into this I’ve just ended up being really confused about wht the general EA stance on this is. I’ve seen recommendations, and then other posts which say these are not good places to donate too, leading me to be unsure of what to do. So, I thought I’d bring it up as a question: do you offset your carbon emissions? If so, where to and why? If you’ve consciously made a decision not to offset, why is that? Am I better of taking the money I would spend on offsetting and donating to one of GiveWell’s top charities instead?
[Question] Do you offset your carbon emissions?
In Will MacAskill’s book ‘Doing Good Better’ he notes that carbon offsetting is a good option if you’re partaking in activites which are harmful to the environment e.g. flying. In the book, he recommends charity ‘Cool Earth’ as a good place to donate too. Having a quick look around the forum, it appears that this is no longer recommended, see in particular this post.
I fly a few times a year and have began to feel guilty about this, and so I thought that offsetting the carbon from these flights (and other parts of my lifestyle) may be a good way to ‘do my part’ in helping reduce the severity of climate change. But when I started to look into this I’ve just ended up being really confused about wht the general EA stance on this is. I’ve seen recommendations, and then other posts which say these are not good places to donate too, leading me to be unsure of what to do. So, I thought I’d bring it up as a question: do you offset your carbon emissions? If so, where to and why? If you’ve consciously made a decision not to offset, why is that? Am I better of taking the money I would spend on offsetting and donating to one of GiveWell’s top charities instead?