Det korta svaret är ja. Det är mer tillförlitligt och därmed bättre att inte släppa ut något alls än att klimatkompensera för det du släpper ut. På GoClimate.org används investeringar i klimatprojekt – klimatkompensation – som ett första steg för att komma igång med att göra något bra för klimatet, men vi menar inte att det är tillräckligt på sikt eller att det är viktigare. Det är dock ett väldigt bra första steg i många människors klimatengagemang.
Samtidigt, för att nyansera bilden lite, så är det såklart bättre att släppa ut 1 ton CO2 och betala bort 2 ton CO2 – och därmed ha nettoeffekten att 1 ton CO2 försvinner från atmosfären – än att inte släppa ut eller ta bort något alls.
Det allra bästa är såklart att inte ställa det mot varandra, utan att både minska sina egna utsläpp och att hjälpa andra att minska utsläpp genom investeringar i klimatprojekt.
I really appreciate this site! Thank you so much for running it!
I have a moral dilemma at the moment. I have got an offer about flying from Sweden to Istanbul for a week in October to do some work. The work is a lot of fun and would make many people happy so I would for sure enjoy it. The flying part feels very bad though. However, I will get paid €2000 for the work and I would happily donate it through this website. If I do this, can my voyage then be considered moral? What do you think? Approximately how much CO2 would €2000 set off?
Great to hear that you like our project! Thanks for telling us, it gives us energy to continue working hard with this! And thank you so much for being a part of our attempt to speed up the transition to a sustainable world and to try to stop climate change.
€2000 would offset about 500 ton of CO2 with the prices we have today, and a trip Istanbul (I assume it’s from Stockholm?) would take about 4 hours – so if you count high with flight emissions on about 0,25 ton/hour (sources: http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_aviation.html ), that would be 0,25*4*2 = 2 ton CO2 Stockholm-Istanbul-Stockholm.
I personally consider a factor 2 – that you offset twice as much as you emit – a good moral bar, so with a factor 250 you are definitely a climate hero in my eyes!
This is of course a more complicated question then the calculation above – since the side effects of your flight are very hard to calculate with. For example:
– would your flight seat be empty if you didn’t fly, or would there just be another person sitting there instead of you?
– would you not flying encourage other people to skip their flights as well and thus have a bigger positive effect than just a flight seat that might or might not be empty?
– will you post lots of inspiring social media posts of your travel and encourage more people to fly? Or will you instead talk about how difficult your decision has been and about the offsetting you do so that less people will fly without thinking on the climate effects and more people will offset their flights when they do fly?
and so on…
We would love to help you do your climate offsetting if you decide to go, just email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you more details on how!