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The Carbon Offset Problem

Wendover Productions · 1.9M views · 2022-06-03 · 22:57

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Overview

Wendover Productions examines why carbon offsets so often fail to reduce emissions, covering specific examples and the perverse incentives in offset schemes.

On Hacker News

Recommended in greenwashing and offset threads as a well-sourced, detailed explanation of how offsets underdeliver.

Recommended by 5 HN people across 5 months · HN mentions 2022–2023

Topics

Climate policy, solutions & debateEnvironment, agriculture & food systemsMicroeconomics & behavioral economics
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carbon creditsgreenwashingclimate policyperverse incentiveswendover

What people said

cowpig · 2022-08 · Strong recommendation

I think this video by Wendover Productions does a much better job than the article of both highlighting specific examples and laying out the perverse incentive structures that carbon offsetting creates: [VIDEO] Here is the list of sources for that video if you're interested: [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [LINK] [5] [LINK] [6] [LINK] [7] [LINK] [8] [LINK] [9] [LINK] [10] [LINK] [11] [LINK] [12] [LINK]

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plopz · 2023-08 · Recommendation

the bigger problem with carbon offsets is that the underlying system that is supposed to be backing the units aren't actually offsetting any carbon. wendover has a nice video on it [VIDEO]

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sofixa · 2023-06 · Recommendation

If you like the video format, Wendover has a very good 20 minute video on the topic, discussing the pitfalls and how non-obvious failure modes of carbon offset schemes can be: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Wendover Productions, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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