-4

The average annual carbon footprint of an average person is 4 tons, more or less:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/

The price of carbon offsetting is somewhere between 1$ to 50$ dollars per tonne:

https://secondnature.org/climate-action-guidance/purchasing-carbon-offsets-faqs/

Do the math. All the world's carbon can be offset with about 4$ to 200$ dollars per person.

So why is climate change considered a problem, when it seems like it only costs a few bucks to solve per person?

daim
  • 9
  • That calculator isn't counting the carbon footprint of many goods you buy. The emissions in building e.g. a house or car is not present. – Caleth Apr 17 '21 at 08:58
  • I do not think this question is on topic, please see this (https://politics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) to help you ask more on topic questions in the future. – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica Apr 17 '21 at 12:41
  • 1
    Politically it's a problem because some people think it's not even a (physical) problem. So they see any price for them to pay as too great, i.e. like throwing money out the window or worse. – the gods from engineering Apr 17 '21 at 16:42
  • In the ($) terms that you asked this https://economics.stackexchange.com/ is a suitable place to ask. Also, you're ignoring the distribution of those emissions (i.e. who should pay and how much) and that more people coming out of extreme poverty entails more emissions per capita on average... – the gods from engineering Apr 17 '21 at 16:49
  • this is a bizarre question. CO2 is a problem by being in the air. offsetting it means nothing if it's still there. carbon pricing is a means to an end, getting people to emit less, not an end it itself. and, specifically, offsets have a somewhat dubious reputation, because it's often unclear that a) things actually get done and b) that they would not have gotten done without the offset. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Apr 17 '21 at 20:47
  • 1
    @Fizz Judging from the tone of OP's (now-deleted) comments, I don't believe they're interested in constructively engaging with the community, either here or elsewhere on the network. – F1Krazy Apr 17 '21 at 20:48
  • According to Morgan Stanley's 2019 estimate, it's going to cost $50 Trillion to mitigate global warming. That's almost $10,000 per living person. You obviously can't (and shouldn't) expect some poor African who doesn't even have electricity to come up with this kind of money. So the cost is obviously going to be a lot higher on the industrialized & rich. – the gods from engineering Apr 18 '21 at 04:02

2 Answers2

6

The idea of carbon offsets through payments is that instead of reducing your own greenhouse gas emissions, you pay someone else to reduce theirs instead.

Emission certificates are traded on open markets, where the price is determined by supply and demand. When few people want to buy emission certificates and a lot of other people have cheap ways to reduce their emissions, then those certificates are cheap.

Currently those certificates are cheap, because there are very few industries who are obligated to buy them. In most cases carbon pricing is either voluntary, or on artificially reduced prices.

But if a lot of people would have to buy emission certificates, then that market balance would change. The world industry will run out of cheap ways to reduce carbon emissions. They will have to start tapping into the real expensive methods. Like atmospheric carbon capture or forestration, and the more expensive forms of renewable energy.

That means the price for emission certificates will increase a lot.

So no, global warming is not a problem which can be solved by just moving money around. It has to be solved by making radical changes to how humanity satisfies and/or reduces its still raising energy demand. And those changes will change the lifestyle of the average household much more than the equivalent of $200 per year and person.

Philipp
  • 76,766
  • 22
  • 234
  • 272
3

I am going to copy/paste the rough calculations from "Hov to avoid a climate disaster" by Bill Gates (chapter 3). I hope it is within fair use, else someone can delete it.

Total Emissions: 51 billion tons each year.
Cost to extract it: 200 $ per ton. (at least)
Total cost: 5.1 trillion USD per year, (6% of the world economy every year from now on.)
Thomas Koelle
  • 2,942
  • 15
  • 23