{"id":28169,"date":"2015-09-12T01:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28169"},"modified":"2015-08-31T21:17:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T01:17:01","slug":"qotd-carbon-offsets-are-dumb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/09\/12\/qotd-carbon-offsets-are-dumb\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Carbon offsets are dumb”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Well if you want to be greener perhaps we could look at carbon offsets.”<\/p>\n

“Carbon Offsets,” I say, working up a head of steam, “are dumb. I could word it better than that but it’s so dumb that the people that support it wouldn’t understand those words.”<\/p>\n

“What’s wrong with carbon offsets?”<\/p>\n

“Analogy-wise, paying someone in South America to grow trees so that I can burn trees is a bit like me paying someone in Uganda 10 quid to be good to someone else so that the PFY can punch you and the Boss here in the face.”<\/p>\n

“I think that’s being rather simplistic — carbon offsets will negate the harm you do in the shorter term while you look for better alternatives,” says the Architect.<\/p>\n

“Yes, but it doesn’t cancel it out geographically. If that were the case I could pay someone in Africa to filter water while I pee in your bathtub!”<\/p>\n

“They could pay me to do their carbon offsets,” the PFY suggests.<\/p>\n

“You don’t have sustainable forestry plantations,” the Architect blurts.<\/p>\n

“Yes I do, I have acres of them in Scotland,” the PFY lies.<\/p>\n

“Are they CDM approved?”<\/p>\n

“Of course.”<\/p>\n

“So I could actually go and see them?”<\/p>\n

“Absolutely. In fact I would insist upon it. You, me, possibly the Boss, a shovel, some lime — it would make a great day out!”<\/p>\n

It appears stupidity does know some bounds as our greenie takes on a little of the colour after doing some mental arithmetic.<\/p>\n

“I think we’ll just stick to the original plan.”<\/p>\n

“Well, have at it, maestro!” I say, gesturing for the PFY that it’s time to be moving on.<\/p>\n

“Nutters!” the PFY says as we exit the meeting room.<\/p>\n

“No,” the Boss says. “It’s very important to the board. They want to be carbon-neutral by 2040.”<\/p>\n

“You mean after they’re all dead — with some token greenification stuff to happen in the next 20 years and all the major changes left till the last few years?” I suggest. “I’m surprised they even stumped up the cash for the consultation.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, they didn’t,” the Boss says. “Our director put up 70k of our equipment budget, given that IT is one of the highest power consumers.”<\/p>\n

“70k — of OUR budget you mean.”<\/p>\n

“It’s not really your money, it’s the company’s!”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Ten minutes later I’m sending 100 quid to Uganda and the PFY to the Director’s office…<\/p>\n

Simon Travaglia, “BOFH: On the PFY’s Scottish estate, no one can hear you scream…”, The Register<\/em><\/a>, 2014-03-21.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Well if you want to be greener perhaps we could look at carbon offsets.” “Carbon Offsets,” I say, working up a head of steam, “are dumb. I could word it better than that but it’s so dumb that the people that support it wouldn’t understand those words.” “What’s wrong with carbon offsets?” “Analogy-wise, paying someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,57,41],"tags":[463,443],"class_list":["post-28169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-parody","tag-pollution"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7kl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28172,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28169\/revisions\/28172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}