The awful truth about Carbon Credits

I've long suspected that buying carbon offsets before flying is just greenwashing.  ProPublica performed the detailed analysis and it's even worse than I suspected.

An Even More Inconvenient Truth by Lisa Song

The appetite is global. For the airline industry and industrialized nations in the Paris climate accord, offsets could be a cheap alternative to actually reducing fossil fuel use.

But the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.

I looked at projects going back two decades and spanning the globe and pulled together findings from academic researchers in far-flung forest villages, studies published in obscure journals, foreign government reports and dense technical documents. I enlisted a satellite imagery analysis firm to see how much of the forest remained in a preservation project that started selling credits in 2013. Four years later, only half the project areas were forested.

Lisa Song also touched on why I'm skeptical of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), the sleight of hand that allows people to choose "100% renewable energy" 24/7, even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.  The illusion is causing real harm.

A 2016 report found that 85% of offsets had a “low likelihood” of creating real impacts.

Another global program, Joint Implementation, has a similar track record. A 2015 paper found that 75% of the credits issued were unlikely to represent real reductions, and that if countries had cut pollution on-site instead of relying on offsets, global CO₂ emissions would have been 600 million tons lower.

Almost all of the projects failed to meet a standard required for any true carbon offset called additionality. What it means is that the environmental gains are only real if the solar farms or windmills would never have been built without the credits.

The market for RECs is such a racket that I will save for another day.  My stomach is already hurting and I can't take any more grief today.

Housing dysfunction

So California SB50 is dead.  (Text of SB-50 Planning and zoning: housing development: incentives)

Housing is a third rail for California politicians and we have the dysfunctional housing market to prove it.

The issue is so divisive, that Russian disinformation campaigns are being developed to divide and paralyze us.  See this thread:

Don't be a hot head.  Think rationally.

Where are all the workers going to live?  Elsewhere is not an acceptable answer.

Workers of all income levels should be able to live close to their jobs.

This saves workers time that they can spend on themselves and their families.

This fosters resilience in the face of disasters.  If awful things happen, they can still get to their jobs or home to their families.

This reduces air pollution caused by commuters.

This reduces traffic congestion caused by commuters.

This reduces the urban heat island effect because cars and road surfaces are a major contributor to localized heating.

When people use active transportation (walking and bicycling), their health improves.  This saves our whole society health care costs.

If parents work near their children's schools, they can be more involved, which improves educational outcomes for all.

I can go on and on.

WE NEED TO BUILD MORE HOUSING NEAR EXISTING JOB CENTERS.

It is not fair or just to keep cramming more apartments in already-dense minority neighborhoods while other areas near jobs are zoned only for single family homes.

BTW, SB50 was killed by CA State Senator Anthony Portantino, a Democrat from La Canada Flintridge and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

You may know La Canada Flintridge (LCF) as the home of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but did you know that it is so expensive, that practically none of the scientists and engineers that work there can afford to live there?

Did you know that Senator Portantino's constituents emit about twice as much CO2 as residents in the dense core of Los Angeles?  Check out the CoolClimate Maps for the US and zoom in for Los Angeles.

A main reason why they are so wasteful is because of the low density and high cost creates a mismatch between jobs and housing.  Thus, everyone has to drive long distances into and out of LCF.  The Density Map makes this nauseatingly clear.

Now that I got this off my chest, I am off to bed. 

Play with the Density Map.  It's a fantastically information-rich data visualizer.

The CoolClimate Maps are also cool, but their maps have more modeling assumptions.  Those are just best-guess averages based upon average consumption based on geographical data and income.  They are generally true, but not gospel.

Play with them in conjunction with the Racial Dot Map of the US.

If you are not mad after you explore the data in these three maps, I don't know how to get through to you.

Heartsick and Mad

I'm heartsick about climate change and how it is caused by rich and old people while the brunt of it is borne by poor and young people.

I know that I sound like a broken record, but we cannot stop catastrophic climate change without fundamentally changing the way we live and get around.  Tinkering around the edges with electric (EV) and autonomous vehicles (AV) is simply a cynical diversionary stalling tactic.

The responsible people who are getting around in carbon-free ways are being murdered by automobile drivers and elected officials act like they are powerless to make our streets work for everyone--and not just people in two ton metal cages.

Beverly Owens, the mother of bicyclist Frederick Frazier, is overcome with emotion as she visits the site of the hit-and-run incident that claimed the life of her 22-year-old son. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

I'm heartsick about all the people killed and maimed by automobile drivers.  They are not auto accidents.  They are the entirely predictable outcomes of streets designed for auto drivers at the expense of everyone else and drivers who feel like shaving a few seconds is worth more than the life of another human being.

I'm heartsick that the number of deaths is growing despite every elected official pledging allegiance to Vision Zero.

The carnage is endless.  See this and this in just the last month in LA.

Should Law Subsidize Driving?

The correct answer is no.

I want more money and public road space for people outside of cars and I want them now.