Dude, I honestly don't understand this. Doesn't the video do everything right for the YT algorithm? I guess most people watch the video to the end, the like/dislike-ratio is almost perfect, almost 0.2 likes per view - what more could they want? More comments maybe? I don't get it
Carbon offsets are like cleaning your room to pretend you're being productive when really.. you should be writing that 5,000 word essay due 3 weeks ago.
Carbon offsets are like watching climate town to distract yourself with "real world problems" instead of writing the proposal you were supposed to turn in yesterday.
It's like he respects his audience enough to assume we are intelligent adults capable of being entertained and informed at the same time... mainstream media could take a cue... oh wait, they get paid off by corporations and politicians to not do that. Oh well!
Schools provide SAME education to large groups of people. This way people end up competing against others with skills worthless on the market, burning out and ending up in poverty. Teachers should be first ones who should quit, moving to f.e. content creation on RU-vid, then to creating documentation and educational software, and finally toward training AI so it can develop pedagogical skills without symbolic violence of culture which pays for it. If Your teachers are not doing that, they failed. They are in the school for benefits or their own narcissism. We live in most revolutionary period of humankind. Even more than 70's. Failure to prepare youth for the change is huge failure. This guy could be a teacher. And he already is. He is good example of how to not bow to status quo and explain facts, no matter how shocking they are.
It is funny but it's sad that science must resort to such uncivilized forms of communication to hold people's attention. Obviously he is very smart & knows how to market to his prospective audience. But when media like this becomes mainstreamed, are we living the plot of idiocracy?
@@WitchMedusa Yes, people are THAT dumb. I mean, just look at the whole of America using cars with highways everywhere instead of public transport. That's a freagin' whole continent of idiots right there.
@@WitchMedusa I think what's most sad are those who think people deserve different levels of respect and consideration based on how they choose to express themselves. You know, the judgemental types trying to gatekeep social standards instead of respecting personal choices, accepting we all grow and show up differently in the world, and focusing on then engaging with the substance of others' ideas, as well as if/how their actions impact others. Clearly there's a boundary at verbal and physical abuse-a line beyond which subjective moral and value judgements, potentially legal judgements, become appropriate reasons to disengaged. But what the fuck do I know, it's probably just me who would rather not stratify humans into categories of worthiness 🤷🏻♂️
@@qnxvr576 If people don't respect themselves or the audience, how can others respect them? I think using things like vulgarity, and instead of just facts, to try to get people to listen is manipulative. Politics and activists has a bad rep of that. That's why some people have been repelled from politics and activists for a long time. Some comments here were reducing Rollie to just a s3x object just cause he was shirtless. That doesn't sound like respect. It may be good for kids to be able to learn about some of these things too, but they can't watch if it or the comments are inappropriate.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c Your kids can't watch. Not every parent is so puritanical as you and would have no issue showing this video to a middle schooler. You've got to stop thinking the whole world thinks/should think like you, and stop trying to restrict free expression because you're personally uncomfortable. As they say, that's a *you* problem. And so is your apparent ability to be manipulated by "bad words" in media. Critical thinkers don't care about the words more than the ideas. They can consume information without fear of a simple read/watch brainwashing them. And they're open minded to new information if it serves them, discarding whatever doesn't. Think critically when consuming media and your feelings shouldn't be bothered so much when encountering things you don't personality like.
Same. Starts with one video "ah, I already know BP fucked us, but w/e I'm bored." *two hours later* "The best solution would be burning Oil and GM executives for fuel."
The horseplay joke and the eagle scream joke combine when an eagle swoops across the screen with a horse neighing. The comedy on this channel is so great. The kind of subtlety you only see from passion projects. Can't imagine how much time these videos take but they're fantastic
This is definitely one of my favorite videos, not only is it comedy gold, but I’ve thought for years: “Yeah, if everyone used carbon offsets we’d solve the problem, right?” But didn’t realize how illegitimate carbon offsets could be. I personally try to offset my own carbon emissions by donating to the organization Everybody Solar which donates solar panels to non-profits across the U.S. and I try to reduce my own carbon emissions any way that I can. But definitely for larger organizations it would be great if they instead paid lobbyists to lobby for climate action and they need to focus on reducing their own emissions as well. I hope they listen. I keep coming back to this video because it’s just so great. I can’t wait for your next video!
Key here is that you simultaneously try to reduce emissions as much as possible. Basically you are doing everything you can, and using offsets for the things you can't control. Companies are doing literally nothing except offsets, when they could be doing so much more.
Thanks so much, Roland. I actually shot a few more minutes that detailed the CDM and specifics about the Kyoto Protocol and the ways it was circumvented, but I cut it out because a lot of people who previewed it thought it was a little dense.
@@ClimateTown i think it would have probaly been intersesting... maybe you could make a sepparate video or at least put a link to the script of what you didn't include in the description? :)
@@ClimateTown Would totally have loved to hear more about CDMs and the Kyoto Protocol damn! As someone who pitched this in a presentation before on this exact topic (it was for a competition a few years back), im really glad to see more information on this on youtube. More power to you!
Great video, but there is one hole I'd like to point out. I think carbon offsets, or any other money-for-carbon-emissions scheme, aren't so much about funding pro-environment efforts as much as to increase the cost of carbon emissions. To shift the economics and make reducing climate impact be the better option for a company's bottom line. What's actually done with the money isn't as important as it simply being a cost. I've heard of other proposals, such as basically the government charging a carbon fee then simply giving said money to the people - or maybe using it to fill deficits or other public works that may or may not be environment-related. But for this to work the costs have to be high enough to incentivize actual action, to make reducing emissions cheaper than simply paying the fee. If companies are by their own accord doing this, the costs couldn't be high enough to motivate actual actions, just enough to look good and pacify the public to not force them to take such actions. They've decided this - buying "carbon offsets" - to be the cheapest option, cheaper than taking any real actions. Companies always do what's most profitable, so we need to make taking real action be the most profitable option.
The problem is that no one country's politicians (heck they can't even band together because democracy) has the gonads to institute laws that disincentivise emissions, because the big carbon emitters are all MNCs. At the first whiff of such a law being put in place that they can't lobby away, they're packing up and jumping ship to other countries where such laws don't exist. Any such policy won't make you popular with your electorate, while at the same time benefitting your gepolitical rivals. All countries would have to come together and equitably and simultaneously create regulations that are balanced enough that moving is not an option for these companies. But if you thought getting one country's politicians to agree to reduce emissions was hard, asking the whole world to do it at the same time is going to be nigh impossible
@@ooooneeee Exactly, that's what I was saying - to actually do any good the carbon credits have to be priced higher, enough to motivate actual change, rather than just a feel-good token. Companies willfully buying them indicates they are too cheap - they need to be expensive enough that companies would rather reduce their emissions.
@ADVENT Insider True, it won't stop all emissions, but it might make something that would reduce emissions be the more economical option in some situations. Make burning fossil fuels be a more expensive option. If fossil fuel energy is more expensive, it would incentivize companies to make measures to reduce such consumption such as implementing more energy efficient solutions or shifting to renewables. Many companies have options that could reduce their emissions but if they're more expensive won't, this would make doing so the cheaper option. Won't work in all cases, like you say some companies are in that industry and this would hurt their profit margin but won't change what they do - they'll still sell oil to those who buy it. More it would impact their customers, those who use fossil fuel, and motivate them to reduce such. Could look at this on an individual scale (where we too often focus) - higher gas prices would motivate people to buy electric cars. Same sort of logic can apply to companies - say motivate a delivery company to buy electric delivery trucks. Or a power company to build more renewable energy infrastructure. There are tons of hypothetical examples out there.
So I have solar panels on my house and there have been several companies that have tried to give me money so they can count my electricity as their offset. And I like money, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t put solar panels on my house so I could not have renewable power, but effectively if I sold my offset that would be what I’d be doing, but if I didn’t think about it too hard I might not realize it… I don’t know how many people do sell it, certainly the companies seemed confused that I wouldn’t sell, but I don’t know how much of that is the salesman vs they really not getting it.
I love this channel. I see a title and I am like: Well it is more nuanced. And I prepare to angrily watch it and then BAM you bring the nuance. I love it. I do offset my emissions using goldstandard and I recommend others who are as well of as many of us westerners are to do the same. I still try to reduce my emission by other means (as far as I can because there is some top down approach required) but offsets at least mean it gets partially offset and it makes the world a slightly more awesome place by helping people around the world getting a bit further ahead in life.
fellow nuance lover here, was thinking of starting a Fans of Climate Town FB group, but maybe that lack of nuance there means I should look elsewhere, any suggestions?
I'm still against putting solar panels basically everywhere apart from roofs on a major scale. We have soil usable to grow crops used for solar panels. There is uncultivated land, where forests could be regrown but we build solar panels. That should only be done, when all roofs and surfaces usbale for panels are complete stacked.
I guess it is not so easy. Not all land is able to be cultivated, also we should not cultivate all land. The costs of mounting them on a roof might not be the same as in land. Also shadow might even help growing something. To much sun and heat is not always good for plants. You also want to lower your electricity loss during transportation, thus placing the panels closer to where you want to use them. I don’t know. I am no expert on the subject. Just saying.
*We have enough carparks to cover up with solar panels. Power companies should be locating the largest ones (malls, stadiums, etc.) and doing deals to put solar panels there.*
@@WowUrFcknHxC *Supposedly, they can now re-use spent uranium allowing us to go more time before we have to bury radioactive waste. But nobody wants to make new nuclear plants nowadays.*
It seems like paying people to subsidize the planting of trees for lumber would be a better carbon offset, the lumber gets hauled off the site after it is grown to spend decades if not centuries in a new house rather than getting burnt down or rotting in a forrest, the land can be reused without ending the exclusivity, and it would help contribute to significantly reducing the cost of housing in some regions without destroying virgin forrests in the process. Heck give me the money and I would do the work myself(not an advertisement since I don't currently do this but if you give me enough money to buy the land I will plant and care for the trees). I live in a region with enough rainfall for trees but relatively few trees so I could grow a lot of lumber if I had enough capital to buy the land.
That is where the dirt is on the solar panel push. There are these financial things called Solar Renewable Energy Certificates. You get them when you install or build a solar system on a home or business and they are worth wildly different amounts of money. Per SREC here in WV, currently 42$ each, but in DC, as much as 400 each. These and REC(Renewable Energy Certs) can and are often retained by the companies that install them(some will not but it is a mixed bag). THEN when that installer gets enough of them they will sell them to other companies(I think meant for the power company but no restraints exist currently). This allows the purchasing company to claim these home installs as part of their efforts to decrease their footprint or carbon emissions. That is, you will spend your money, watching out for predatory loans and horrible installers. JUST so that installer can sell something that should belong to you to a company that can then claim it part of their carbon footprint as a minus. Meaning they can then produce that much more crap. It is exactly as Climate Town states, but I thought he should have mentioned this more specifically. If there is one thing that humans are good at it is that we unintentionally allow some people to intentionally rig the game. SO, again. Solar installers will often hold on to the SRECs then sell them to other companies that can then use them to produce even more pollution. The more effort people are putting into going to a sustainable and cleaner energy production system...the more these people are cheating. the more you know. don't even get me started on attempting to buy your own gear and equipment to install it yourself, or the fact that you have to have insurance on your home and land where the install is going before you can get it grid-tied.
Oh man, I appreciate the way you edited this so much! I live around that area of Brooklyn--so I know almost exactly where you filmed most of your ending scenes. I appreciate the effort you've put in, and the tightness of your script! Like you knew exactly what you were gonna say and then went from place to place for a few lines apiece. Props, dude. That's a helluva presentation on such an important topic.
Great video! It's worth emphasizing that not all offset schemes are equal. For example Cool Earth helps indigenous Amazonians protect their own land and surrounding area from logging, so it's good for the people and the planet. William Macaskill, author of Doing Good Better, estimated they save 1 ton of CO2 for around $5, while simultaneously benefiting those communities.
This is like Adam Something's analogy that really applies here, it's like you spend a huge amount of money buying a fancy roomba that detects when there's poop on the floor of your house and cleans automatically, it instead of just stop doing it on the ground and going to the bathroom instead
Rollie, these are great! Witty, informative, and well produced. I love your gloves-off approach, calling it like you see it. The mic blue taped to your chest is great signature, like John Krasinski in boxers on SGN.
I was very confused about carbon offsets. Thank you for your explanation. The part that actually made me say it loud "no way" more than any other was when you said indigenous people were being kicked off their land in the Amazon. I don't know why that was the most shocking part. Seems obvious considering our history.
OMG. I've spent so much effort trying to convince folks that planting trees (short term biogenic carbon cycle) will never offset the liberation of fossil carbon
This is the best channel I've ever accidentally found. I've binged like 8 of your vids. Love the humor and love the messages that people need to hear in a easy to digest/entertaining fashion. Here's a comment to help the algorithm!
Gotta say, this channel is something else. I first saw your fast fashion video (I'm a fashion design student and seamstress) and have been watching your videos out of order, and I'm so glad I did. This is really a message that needs to be heard.
04:54 LIBRAR Y unbelievable! is this the best joke in its kind ever? or is it the only one? or the first? it's definitely breaking some kind of record... you deserve a reward... I couldn't stop laughing and had to replay it to hear what you said, but then I saw the joke again and started laughing again so I had to replay it, but...
in UK the HS2 train project planted thousands of trees to replace those they cut down building the line, a huge number died in dry weather, HS2 said "hey its cheaper to plant new ones next year, than pay to water them"
Hey Thomas, thanks for watching! I really appreciate it. I bet there's nothing in this video your class hasn't seen before, but I'll understand if you can't share it.
@@ClimateTown I 100% agree with you on that - although my boss might not haha... Please keep producing this content, I love your balance of humor, energy, and information. Very entertaining and informative!
Paying farmers in Brazil to not slash and burn rainforests is kinda important. That said, that policy shouldn't rely entirely off fossil fuel companies trying to drum up PR for all the polluting they do. It should just be a government program, maybe even an international program - one that puts money into the hands of farmers *_and_* indigenous ppls in parts of the world where maintaining old growth forests and rainforests is massively important to the climate and ecosystems. And by giving them that money, they can then spend it in their own countries which boosts the economies of said countries. But when have neo-liberals ever supported just _giving_ ppl money, right?
So. . . I don't own a car. I commute by bike. I live in an apartment in a walkable neighborhood. Near a subway station. Don't buy fast fashion. Hell, my winter coat is like 30 years old. I'm a vegan locavore. Damn, my carbon footprint is small. Could BP maybe send me money? I could be their carbon offset recipient! Yeah, that would work!
One of the problems is. Is that as I think most of us know. Investors are more into short-term gains then long-term investments most of the time. My grandfather back in the day not very rich by the way. Would talk about how he would invest in companies he believed in and was there for the long term. Because he wanted to grow with the company and believed in the products. And I think that was the state of most investors of his generation. Nowadays it's about short-term gains and people don't really care unless it makes the money. Maybe some do. But still the CEOs and the boards of the corporations would rather pump out more money quicker than sustain their company into the future. Obviously I'm talking very broadly. And there's always outliers. And examples of everything. But I do have a sense that is the way things are generally. Love your videos by the way been sharing them with my friends. With RU-vid's algorithm it's hard sometimes to find new and talents RU-vidrs. And it seems you are talented but not new which baffles me why RU-vid did not suggest your channel earlier. Regardless great stuff. Absolutely love it. It makes me cringe and laugh at the same time.
Direct Air Capture 1.5b grant recently had a buy-in from Black Rock, selling carbon offset is set to be big business, if oil and gas have anything to say about it. 1PointFive is leading the case. For example: "Under their agreement, TD Securities agreed to buy 27,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide removal credits over 4 years. The amount of the CDR credits is one of the largest bought so far by a financial institution." 2023
Me and my friend have a pact when we cheat on our partners, he has agreed that for every night I cheat, he won't and vice versa, and since we cheat all the time, we are reducing the amount of cheating going on by the equivalent of like 4 cheats! He's a trustworthy guy too, I have faith he won't cheat the deal!
Seeing as I just discovered you today and binged every one of your videos I can confidently conclude that you are an incredible comedian and insanely informational content creator. Since the first video I watched today, you've already gained over 1k subscribers. I literally just made a comment not long ago about you only being at 130k subscribers and now look at you, 1k more. Keep busting these quality videos out my man, you're going to be in the millions very soon.
Never heard of this channel before today…just marathoned every episode. I actually felt the earth warm a little from all the electricity I just used :( Great channel, great research
I love you! The Truth Telling doesn't get much better (like at 9:00 in the video!), the humour is so refreshing for such a serious topic, and the editing is really fun! Keep it up Rolly!
I wonder if allowing those congressmen to vote on climate laws would classify as a conflict of interest and we can sue them to make them abstain from voting against such laws.
Can you also cover the steel man of offsets... Ie: funding carbon sequestration, developing replacement technologies, funding the cheapest changes first, until all carbon is offset.
I think a legitimate carbon offset would be funneling money to homeowners to buy solar panels…. Since you’ve explained that car manufacturers and oil companies have made the US car centric and that our shit zoning has led to so many single family homes… I think if they all technically went “off the grid,” that’d be a good use of funding!
I am going ham on all your videos after your appearance on Fake the Nation. Thanks for all your hard work, deep dive research, excellent writing & delivery, and gratuitous shirtlessness in every video I've watched so far.
The problem with carbon offsets is that we wouldn't allocate them fairly, and wouldn't draw them down fast enough. It *is* the case that certain industries have an easier time to scale off CO2 than others, and if we could actually hold to the plan on offset, they could balance that out. But, as it is: we have to look industry in the eye, and add significant, and escalating, taxes on durable carbon emissions. Which is probably easiest done by taxing carbon fuels/inputs, because you don't buy a truckload of coal and then NOT burn it... The enforcement mechanism is similar to what's needed for offsets, anyway.
It's not just CarbonDioxide. That's the largest single factor that we can control, but that just captures heat that radiated from the ground, in Infrared. There's also Methane, and Water Vapor, but the albedo of the Surface is a significant factor as well. That controls how much heat is soaked up from the sun, and re-emitted as infrared, to be absorbed by Greenhouse Gasses. Pavement is a significant factor in Global Warming. Your car glass, have you ever left your car out in the sun, and come back to find it's turned into a solar oven? That heat gets released into the air, and absorbed by greenhouse gasses. As the oceans rise, they lower the net albedo (Reflectance) of the surface, by absorbing more sunlight. As the glaciers melt... A major problem, a major lie of all these industries is it's about Carbon. It is, but it's also about the shingles on your roof. The heat radiated by your air conditioner, and refrigerator compressor. It's also about the heat from electronics, including dark absorbent photovoltaics left out in the sun all day, and all night... As long as the conversation is hyperfocused on this 1 factor, the HEAT your engine produces is not being addressed. So, we talk about "Climate Change" instead of "Global Warming."
Thermodynamics is basically the study of Entropy. Rule number 1 is you can't get something for nothing. Rule number 2 is you can't even break even. The remainder, the waste product of every inefficiency, in every aspect of our technology is heat (Which also makes electronics, including photovoltaics less efficient.) CO2 is just one of the things that captures that heat. Another one is Water Vapor. AKA Humidity, that's why deserts are so cold at night. All the heat from the day escapes back into space in Infrared (Or gets trapped by another Greenhouse gas) Even if we get rid of the CO2, if we keep producing exponentially more heat, we will evaporate more water vapor, and keep exponentially warming the planet. The problem is Heat. Not "Carbon."
It is 250 degrees above the atmosphere, only 76 degrees on the surface. 174 degrees of solar heat gone, blocked out by the CO2 and other “greenhouse gases”. Yes, they keep some heat in, about 20 degrees, but they block out 194 degrees for a net temperature of 174. Gilbert Plass is the father of CO2 warming. His paper in 1955 THE CARBON DIOXIDE THEORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE started all this idiocy. The first sentence of the Abstract for his papers states: “The most recent calculations of the infra-red flux in the region of the 15 micron CO2, band show that the average surface temperature of the earth increases 3.6” C if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is doubled and decreases 3.8’ C if the CO2 amount is halved, provided that no other factors change which influence the radiation balance.” You get warming ONLY if added CO2 does not change the radiation balance, meaning the heat entering does not fall with added CO2. Before satellites, all scientists worked from the assumption that the sun mostly produced visible light and little heat. That visible light warmed the earth as the levels of CO2 and water vapor blocked out all the sun’s heat. Adding CO2 will not block out more incoming Sun heat as the was so little coming in to to begin with. But this is wrong. Heat is the majority of the sun’s radiation. 30% of the sun’s heat makes it past the atmosphere, so adding more CO2 does change the radiation balance. Added CO2 blocks out more sun heat cooling the earth and reversing the greenhouse effect! Which is what Plass’s paper said. Plass assumed that added CO2 did not change the radiation balance, so added CO2 created a warmer earth, but he was wrong, added CO2 created a cooler earth. 250 above, only 76 degrees below. Cooler earth hotter atmosphere. The Troposphere is getting warmer with added CO2, not the surface. The CO2 in the troposphere is absorbing more incoming sun heat and getting warmer. We are getting warmer, but that is because the Little Ice Age (LIA), ended in 1850. The Earth has been warming up since then. Snow has been melting and the oceans have been warming up. With less and less cold left over from the LIA the warming is accelerating. We are going back to the Earth that existed in the last Inter-Glacial Period when Iceland was baren of ice and the seas were 26 feet higher than today. 20,000 years ago the seas were 110 feet lower than today. This is how it goes on the Earth, warm to cold, low seas to high seas. This is just the first time mankind has had the education and intelligence to understand what is happening. Neanderthals lived through the last Ice Age but they didn’t know there was an ice age, it was just the way it was. Earlier hominids had no idea that they were in an inter-glacial age. All they knew was it was it was warm. Plass’s work is on the internet just google and read it for yourself, you only need to read the first sentence in the abstract.
Just found your channel by way of Our Changing Climate (and Second Thought), aboslutely love your content. I even sent your Fedex vid to my family imessage convo and my climate change skeptic father watched the whole thing and is investigating further and if that aint a miracle... keep on keepin on my dude, you're already making a difference
I watched a video recently describing the future of geothermal. Apparently oil companies are starting to invest in geothermal. They already know how to drill very well, some of the geothermal strategies include fracking like techniques, as well as deep drilling. I'm not a fan of fracking geothermal, but it seems to me that geothermal would be a more reasonable way for oil companies to "stop" climate change than carbon capture. They would also have to stop drilling oil.. That would only happen if drilling geothermal was more profitable for them than drilling oil. So unlikely..
