> Because so few people are interested in offsets right now, there's a huge amount of "low-hanging fruit" options for cheap things humanity can do to offset carbon emissions.
Yeah, that the trick. To put it boldly: What they offer is not sustainable. This means that these green initiatives hide the real price of CO2 or at least give a very wrong impression.
That statement is too bold -- the price of a CO2 offset is not a constant. As the easy methods become exhausted, we'll have to move to more expensive methods, yes. But currently there's still an absolute glut of fairly-cheap CO2 reduction methods that just aren't being done, or wouldn't be done without the offset pricing, so it's still a net benefit to do them.
Well asymptocially it is. And then the real intersting stuff happens, because economy becomes aligned.
> But currently there's still an absolute glut of fairly-cheap CO2 reduction methods that just aren't being done, or wouldn't be done without the offset pricing, so it's still a net benefit to do them.
There also is a net harm if people get the wrong impression of what the real cost of CO2 is.
What is the "real cost" of a loaf of bread? It doesn't make sense to talk of things as if they have an absolute inherent dollar value, as both the cost to produce these things and the relative utility of dollars both change. The asymptotic bound assumes current technology and current dollar values, which are both going to change in the tens of years involved.
Yeah, that the trick. To put it boldly: What they offer is not sustainable. This means that these green initiatives hide the real price of CO2 or at least give a very wrong impression.