Are Carbon Credits Like “Rape Credits”?
Here’s an interesting comment I just stumbled across on the Internet recently:
“Carbon offsets” have for some time now seemed to me to be the same as “Rape credits”.
Someone like Al Gore guzzles up huge amounts of energy, with resultant huge carbon emissions, for just one individual, but buys “carbon offsets” from some outfit, maybe one that he even gets “dividends” from.
Now, image that there were such a thing as “rape credits”, where a man could go around raping women and instead of being sent to jail, or castrated, instead he could purchase “rape credits” which would “absolve” him.
The two concepts seem basically identical to me. With “carbon offsets” someone is paid to do something like plant trees somewhere that “breath in” carbon thus counteracting the damage (or supposed damage anyway, but that is another matter) done by increased carbon from all Al’s guzzling. “Rape credits” would be the very same idea. Al Gore could go around raping large numbers of women but pay money to some outfit, probably one that Al Gore got “dividends” from, and they would donate money to rape crisis hotlines and centers and councilors who would undue some of the damage. Maybe they could undue on average half the damage per rape victim, so rapist Al would have to make two donations for every woman he raped.
Hmm. Interesting analogy. What do you think? Do you think carbon credits are like “rape credits”? I certainly see the point of not using carbon offsets as a justification for trampling over the environment, but it’s better to have carbon credits than nothing at all.
Tags: carbon credits
The analogy is ridiculous.
Carbon credits are a means of reducing the net CO2 in the atmosphere. What matters is not, in the end, who is pumping out what where, but that the net amount stops rising, and falls over time. Releasing CO2 is a reversible form of damage, not a permanent one, and paying someone elsewhere to absorb or mitigate that release is totally legitimate.
The idea of carbon credits, and a market in those credits, is based on the model which was implemented to phase out CFC production, and very successfully at that. By allowing a market in credits, you let the mitigation take place at the point in the economy where it is cheapest per tonne (ie most cost-effective). This reduces the overall economic impact.
Of course such a market must be thoroughly overseen and regulated, unfashionable as such words are in regards to commodity and derivative trading, but otherwise free of artificial distortions and barriers. The fact that GHG emission is free of charge today is a massive market distortion which tilts the playing field towards coal and away from renewables.
I don’t think rape really qualifies as reversible damage. No amount of funding for crisis centers can “mitigate” the cost of the original impact.