Hello Manny, thanks for the encouragement and good ideas! Some quick responses to your points:
Yes, reduction in particulate matter is super-important, and we haven’t incorporated this into our CEAs. Measuring the social cost (of both CO2 and particular matter) is pretty tough/controversial, but in the future we’d like to incorporate this kind of thinking into our models.
Yes, this is a good point. We’ve focused on the US because we have a comparative knowledge from our understanding of the US context, and also as a large emitter changes in US federal policy can have really big effects. But it wouldn’t surprise me if there are great opportunities in other contexts. As Giving Green grows, we hope to expand our research to more contexts.
Yes, this is certainly true, and would mean our estimates of overly conservative.
Finally, I’d say that I don’t really think that the carbon markets are a promising form of funding for activism. Corporation (who are the primary buyers of carbon credits) seek certainty of emissions reductions so that they can make their “carbon-neutral” commitments (no matter how sketchy this may be in practice.) I don’t think many corporations are going to have hunger for less certain and politically controversial activist “offsets”. I think this space will have to be funded by philanthropy.
Hello Manny, thanks for the encouragement and good ideas! Some quick responses to your points:
Yes, reduction in particulate matter is super-important, and we haven’t incorporated this into our CEAs. Measuring the social cost (of both CO2 and particular matter) is pretty tough/controversial, but in the future we’d like to incorporate this kind of thinking into our models.
Yes, this is a good point. We’ve focused on the US because we have a comparative knowledge from our understanding of the US context, and also as a large emitter changes in US federal policy can have really big effects. But it wouldn’t surprise me if there are great opportunities in other contexts. As Giving Green grows, we hope to expand our research to more contexts.
Yes, this is certainly true, and would mean our estimates of overly conservative.
Finally, I’d say that I don’t really think that the carbon markets are a promising form of funding for activism. Corporation (who are the primary buyers of carbon credits) seek certainty of emissions reductions so that they can make their “carbon-neutral” commitments (no matter how sketchy this may be in practice.) I don’t think many corporations are going to have hunger for less certain and politically controversial activist “offsets”. I think this space will have to be funded by philanthropy.