Loki
Active member
Do you do this deliberately to troll anybody you don’t agree with or is this really your actual point of view?
Carbon offsetting for expeditions
- Thread starter Badlad
- Start date
Loki
Active member
The people and ecosystems of Vietnam, Borneo etc were getting on just fine before tourist, money and western capitalism arrived.
I don’t think anyone is under any illusions about how hard it will be to pull out of our nosedive into disaster and we will only have ourselves to blame if we don’t.
I don’t think anyone is under any illusions about how hard it will be to pull out of our nosedive into disaster and we will only have ourselves to blame if we don’t.
cap n chris
Well-known member
No, it's actually my viewpoint; no trolling involved. 10% of the global economy and 16% of global jobs is international tourism, entire countries depend almost completely on air travel tourism and lithium powered planes won't exist to replace current ones 'cos a flat battery has the same mass as a fully charged one. The inertia to continue with liquid fuels in nations which aren't mizz-mazed with glassy-eyed peabrains taking up airtime will simply continue doing what they need to in order to sustain life as we know it.
Loki
Active member
Do you have to insult everyone you don’t agree with? Why can’t you just have a measured polite discussion like everyone else?
Our destruction of the natural environment is not sustainable and nothing good is going to happen. It’s unfortunate that the people who care are not in boardrooms of the multinational mega corporations who don’t give a toss as long as they get to retire to (insert place name where other morally obtuse a$$holes go to die).
If the massive profits of fossil fuel corporations had been funnelled into greeener tech over the last 50 years since the scientific community began to warn governments about this we would likely be in a totally different place.
Humans are resourceful and clever but unfortunately we can also be mindblowingly stupid.
Tourism? If some economies have to take a massive hit to help solve this then so be it. People will get over it, life moves on. Look at Ukraine- massive country decides to wreck a country while the world looks on and does f all. It’s like an analogy for the climate crisis.
Our destruction of the natural environment is not sustainable and nothing good is going to happen. It’s unfortunate that the people who care are not in boardrooms of the multinational mega corporations who don’t give a toss as long as they get to retire to (insert place name where other morally obtuse a$$holes go to die).
If the massive profits of fossil fuel corporations had been funnelled into greeener tech over the last 50 years since the scientific community began to warn governments about this we would likely be in a totally different place.
Humans are resourceful and clever but unfortunately we can also be mindblowingly stupid.
Tourism? If some economies have to take a massive hit to help solve this then so be it. People will get over it, life moves on. Look at Ukraine- massive country decides to wreck a country while the world looks on and does f all. It’s like an analogy for the climate crisis.
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
The profits of fossil fuel companies were given to shareholders, mostly pension funds. They then got to decide what to do with it. I imagine most got spent on cream teas in the end, but still.
A long time ago I know that companies like Shell and Exxon were seriously interested in nuclear power, but then people said they would disinvest if they did something so silly because everyone knew how nuclear power would destroy the world and burning gas was so much safer. And here we are.
Jungle tourism is not really a meaningful thing anywhere I have been. Malaysia gets no more than 2% of GDP from tourism, and a large fraction of that is things like golf (Japanese, Koreans and Chinese), I jest not. Bit like Ireland in that respect (Americans).
A lot of Malaysians are actually quite keen on nature, but some of the regional governments have been rapacious. Sarawak is by far the worst, and I am not alone in thinking it’s because it is not an ethnic Malay population and thus has little sway on the peninsular. Out of sight, out of mind. Most of the oil and gas is in Sarawak, but that goes to the national government. The trees was what was left to the Sarawak government, so they logged the lot. Locals who objected got dragged off, but most just got paid buttons.
if Sarawak had refused to join the Malaysian federation like Brunei did, it would be one of the richest countries in the world per head and they would (like Brunei) prob not have logged the forest much.
cap n chris
Well-known member
A billion people will have to get over it and move on? Pretty blasé and insulting to generations of families who have built their lives, homes and families catering for tourists. The 5miilion+ Spanish who live in the Canarian Archipelago sre going to do what, say you, to make ends meet just so you can glibly wave their existence to one side? Nope. Things won't be changing any time soon. Poverty and unemployment on the islands are already among the worst in Europe, suicide among the young is shocking, and this is because of the economy being stifled for just the last couple of years. If tourism doesn't revive it will kill masses of otherwise decent human beings. EcoNutters seem blithely unaware of the genocidal unintended consequences of their shouted policies.
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I got forced into flying to Majorca for a “destination wedding” in a castle thing last year. Everyone flew there. I was very grumpy about it, I thought it was wildly excessive. Probably cost a quarter of a million all in for all concerned. It was clear from the other guests of the same age (30 odd) that this was not only OK, but expected. It formed a significant part of their lifestyle.
aricooperdavis
Moderator
I'm sure that's not representative of young people in general, but perhaps is a consequence of selection bias (the sample of young people is those invited to a destination wedding in a Mallorcan castle).
I haven't flown since pre-covid, and that was to the Dachstein expedition, which just goes to show how relevant the topic is. I wouldn't have flown if my lift hadn't pulled out at the last minute, partly out of environmental concerns, but mainly because it's really expensive, and tricky getting all that equipment under a sensible weight and through security.
This is more like the sort of info I was after - rather than weddings in Mallorca
. The expedition calculated C02 from travel as 31 tonnes. There is a letter from a company called Go Balance which states that they have "retired 35 Natural Capital to fully offset the calculated carbon footprint of the" [expedition]. This appears to relate to a tree saving project in the Amazon. What do folk think of it.
Loki
Active member
How does that work? I’m not going to cut these trees down so I can go on holiday. Does anyone check and audit these carbon credit people that what they flog is actually meaningful? I view them in the same way as I viewed the bitcoin and nft market before I was proven right and people realised it was all spray painted golden bollocks .
alanw
Well-known member
Coincidentally, this just turned up in my newsfeed
theconversation.com
‘Worthless’ forest carbon offsets risk exacerbating climate change
We need to urgently reform the way forest conservation is measured and sold as a way to offset emissions.
theconversation.com
Chocolate fireguard
Active member
I thought it worth trying to check some of the figures given on pages 87 & 88 of that report, but it’s not easy to find anything the sensible person would trust as being impartial.This is more like the sort of info I was after - rather than weddings in Mallorca
The expedition calculated C02 from travel as 31 tonnes. There is a letter from a company called Go Balance which states that they have "retired 35 Natural Capital to fully offset the calculated carbon footprint of the" [expedition]. This appears to relate to a tree saving project in the Amazon. What do folk think of it.
The OP was about flying.
For flying the Department of Transport gives a figure of 134kg of CO2/passenger-hour.
The journey Munich – Stockholm – Keflavic for 3 people is stated in the report as generating 2.111tonnes of CO2.
According to Google the 2 flights involved have average times totalling 5h 35m, and using the D of T figure gives 2.2tonnes, which is as close as anybody could want.
But there are other figures available, including 150, 250 and 350kg/passenger-hour from the National Energy Foundation, an outfit called Carbon Independent and Quaker Green Action respectively.
The differences appear to be due to how much account is taken of something called the Radiative Forcing Factor, which attempts to come up with a factor by which the CO2 emissions of high-flying aircraft should be multiplied to take account of the other ways in which they affect climate (methane from their NOx emissions, water vapour, particulates, ozone).
It is difficult to come up with an accurate RFF and over the years numbers like 1.9 and 2.7 have been offered, so it’s not a trivial thing, and so far as I can see nobody denies that it exists.
The D of T figure does not take it into account at all, and technically that is right – it doesn’t increase the amount of CO2, but it certainly has an effect on the contribution to global warming by aircraft, and if you are going to make up for that by planting or saving trees – assuming that is possible – you really ought to plant or save 2 or 3 times as many trees as the CO2 figure suggests.
cap n chris
Well-known member
Loki
Active member
Do not infer that I’m blasé and and insulting or that I do not care about the lives of people. This is not just about people, it’s about the future of all life on earth, not just about humans with their lives built on planetary destruction. The consequences of stopping tourism that you mention are also what will happen to the general population of countries at the forefront of the climate crisis, should we carry on with what we’re doing now.
Replace Econutters in your final sentence with The fossil fuel lobby and you have the situation today.
You want to call me an Econutter? Fine, I’m proud to be someone who considers the consequences of his actions and makes conscious choices to reduce the harm that I’m doing. I’m proud to be somebody who wants to make the world a better place in the future. I’m proud to be someone who looks at all these humongous distribution warehouses being built everywhere with dismay, them being symbols of our pointless overconsumptive existence.
Yes I’ve done my fair share of flying in the past and retrospectively I’m not proud of it. I’ve not taken a non business flight since 2019 and long may it stay that way. If a friend wants to get married in Tahiti they are going to have to enjoy it without me.
This is my final post on this topic I can’t be arsed anymore. But then that’s probably what you want because you’re now going to think you’ve won the argument. Believe me , you haven’t.
