Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
by namdnay on Monday September 14, 2020 @11:42AM
(#24471466)
Ahhhh I thought the offsets were "standalone positives" , like planting trees. Indeed if an offset can be helping others reduce, it's definitely a lower cost (and less scalability, as you point out)
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Re:Google says its carbon footprint is now zero
by throwaway894345 on Monday September 14, 2020 @12:13PM
(#24471863)
Yeah, I had the same experience when I learned about this stuff. It's really interesting; the trick is quality assurance--making sure that the carbon offset you buy actually represents 1 ton of carbon being removed from the atmosphere, or more commonly 1 ton that would have been added to the atmosphere but won't be on account of your offset. As far as I can tell, the difficulty of QA is the only valid criticism of offsets.