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CO2 "offsets" have always been bullshit green washing. The only way to regulate emissions is by directly regulating emissions. Not coming up with elaborate loopholes.
from june 2022 to june 2023 shell did $365 billion in revenue. the amount dedicated this effort is .027%. one dollar of every three thousand six hundred and fifty.
They made $40 billion in profit on oil and gas in 2022 and they can't even be arsed to spend 0.25% to pretend to be doing something to reduce the rate of their eco-cide 
Is it even possible for a gas company to offset CO2 emissions? They would have to charge insane amounts
It's not possible for anyone to offset CO2 because that's just not how CO2 works. If its going into the air it doesn't matter how much money moves around in the background, it's still going into the air. Carbon offsets were never going to accomplish anything because physics don't work that way
You could create a chemical reaction that transform it to carbon and O2?
That's pretty much what a tree is. But then it dies and burns/decomposes and it goes back in the atmosphere. It's temporary storage.
Not really, because there are different "scopes" of emissions when declaring offsets:
Scope 1: emissions done directly during normal operations
Scope 2: emissions from the suppliers, transport and resourcing of raw materials etc.
Scope 3: indirect emissions caused by the use of the product and other effects the company is responsible for.
Obviously fossil fuel companies like Shell mostly have Scope 3 emissions. Barely any company that declares offsets even considers Scope 3 emissions though.
So all companies out there that even say they 100% offset, often just mean Scope 1 emissions. That's basically systemic green washing.
Also a lot of the offsets are nearly useless, so even if Scope 1 and 2 are offset you gotta subtract 90% ineffectiveness from the amount.
Guess it's time for CO² taxes on fuel/oil production and export, yes?
As long as shell uses some of that money for lobbying that isn't going to happen
I'll never understand how lobbying became a thing. It should have been shut down as anti democracy the second it was proposed
I also can't understand lobbying. To me, a non-US person, it just seems like legalized corruption.
A shocking number of our laws are written by lobbyist. Like you can't import foreign cars unless they're the exact model sold in the US or over 25 years old, because of anti competive laws created by automotive lobby's.
Because that's exactly what it is. It's a way for the rich to force the policies they want while quelching any policies they don't.
Good because c02 emissions offsets are pretty much bullshit. I'd rather they do something productive for the environment with that money, than giving it to another snake oil salesman.
Narrator voice "they did not do something productive for the environment with that money"
I’d rather they do something productive for the environment with that money
Bet they use it for stock buybacks.
How about increasing shareholder wealth? Does that feel more productive to you?
Just confiscate all their money and the money of the shareholders of the past and present. They knew what they were doing. Then shut their enterprise down.
This, but first, randomly select 150 people from the planet at random to be in charge of it all. There is no state, organisation, political party or group/person who I would trust with making decisions about that money. I’d really just rather have a bunch of anonymous random people in charge of it.
Don't forget the managers!
Yep, it's a publicly traded company whose duty is to make a profit. It's why DEI is dying off as well.
Also why life on earth is dying off as well...
Companies don't have feelings
Regulations are the way to fix things, just asking companies or their CEOs to be nice doesn't work
The ideal company perfectly maximizes profit, we just should work towards implementing for example 4 day work weeks, higher minimum wage and other great things using regulations
Effectively we should have an ever evolving cat and mouse game where regulations for companies keep getting stricter and stricter to improve the lives of the many because who would have guessed that weekends for example didn't completely destroy the world like company spokepeople said
It was pretty obvious they would be doing this since they removed references to it a couple months ago.
This is probably a good thing. Offsets programs are rife with abuse and frequently amount to nothing more than greenwashing. The reality is Shell never had any intention to do anything meaningful. At least their decision to cancel the program is honest.
I’d rather some scammers steal money from shell for nothing than Shell have more profits.
Always happens. A commitment to achieve some climate goal in the future isn't even worth use as an buttwipe. There need to be serious consequences for failure that go above and beyond the worst-case theoretical cost of the commitment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
It's literally nothing. Only ACTUALLY decarbonizing is worth a damn.
And to be clear, offsets in ANY form don't count either. The Paris commitments are to get to ZERO carbon. The only way it makes sense for a country to sell an offset is if they sell that offset at an equivalent price to what it will cost you to get rid of your LAST ton of CO2. Since the offsets aren't nearly that expensive, we know they are load of total bullshit. They're fraudulent. Double or triply so for non-national exchanges.
Carbon removal can count, but the legit research is almost always worse bang for your buck than just fucking decarbonizing.
To add on to this, a common carbon "offset" is to pay land owners to not cut down trees that they often weren't planning on cutting down anyway. John Oliver has a segment on Carbon Offsets.
Don't forget having multiple parties pay to not cut down the same tree(s) that weren't going to be cut down.
It also has what is called the "leakage" issue in carbon offsets -- if one group of people were going to cut down the trees, get paid, and don't, there's still a demand for the timber/land. Some different hectare of trees somewhere else will likely get cut down instead.
It really is a rare case where the neoliberal logic has it right. We expect the cost of decarbonization to grow as we have less and less CO2 being produced. The first tons of CO2 to get rid of are the easiest and cheapest ones. The very last ones, the holdouts, are going to be the most difficult and expensive. In a paradigm where as close to 100% of carbon as possible must be eliminated, then any carbon offsets only make sense if they're being sold at an equivalent price to those last tons of CO2 to be eliminated. Because otherwise, the person who thinks they're selling it is really just loaning it out -- and the payment is guaranteed to come due.
So carbon offsets should be at least as expensive as, say, direct air carbon capture. Likely more, since even air capture may struggle on those last few tons of emissions. And that's assuming no scammy accounting practices with the emissions are happening. When in reality, carbon offsets is nearly nothing but scammy practices.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
https://piped.video/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.