I'm no fan of the deforestation that is being shown here, but for a Westerner to tell people in the Global South to not deforest is hypocritical and economically deceitful. Look at pretty much all of Europe and the Eastern United States. It has almost been all deforested and replaced with farmland at some point. Agriculture is an important step in a county's economic stability and progress. Some trees need to be cut down and that land be turned into farmland to help that developing county's citizens. Imagine being a poor framer supporting a growing family with an opportunity to grow more of your crop by cutting down some trees and having rich white people in a post scarcity society telling you you're a bad person.
Bill Gates covers this extensively in his recent excellent book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Even if all the rich world countries went to emissions zero, that wouldn’t be enough, because the developing world needs to continue to develop. This is a good thing but it is a problem of progress, and underscores how complicated the solution is
He is one of those do as I say, not as I do type of toxic people (e.g. tells everyone to cut emissions while himself enjoying private jet flights). I don't feel that he is genuine, but for entertainment value could be worth a try.
> I have a higher-than-average carbon footprint, so I’m taking extra steps to do my part. In the book I briefly mention how I’m offsetting my own emissions. I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint. As of now, the standard calculation for carbon footprints is based on an estimate of $400 per ton of emissions. But since the way we calculate carbon footprints is still in its infancy, I take our family’s carbon footprint and double it to make sure we are fully covering our footprint and then some.
> I also like to think of my investments in zero-carbon technologies as another kind of offset for my emissions. Investing in companies doesn’t make my carbon footprint smaller. But if I’ve picked any winners, they’ll be responsible for removing much more carbon than I am responsible for creating. I have given more than $1 billion toward innovations and ideas that I hope will help the world get to zero—including affordable and reliable clean energy, low-emissions cement, steel, meat, and more.
> I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint.
It's not like this money magically got created. In order for him to have $5 million, someone had to pay it, maybe by creating even more pollution. At least he is aware that he is doing bad thing, but the attitude "I am rich, so I can" is narcissistic and wrong.
You're treating economics as a zero-sum game, which is false. The world as a whole is significantly better off than it was before, and we cannot attribute all of our productivity and qualify-of-life gains solely to the exploitation of natural resources and oppressing people.
Does terrible things happen as a result of moral hazard? Sure. But does anyone who earns a dollar take a dollar from someone else, or the world, to obtain it? No.
> I spend about $5 million every year to offset my family’s carbon footprint.
And how much carbon does he emit to earn that 5 million. That emission isn't part of his family's emission because it comes from microsoft. It's like tax evasion but for carbon emission.
He's done more than most -ref. Polio eradication, his (foundations') work on malaria... What have you done in this space? I know I've done shamefully little, but ride an electric scooter and take my son to school and back in a Bakfiets, trips I used to make in the car.
> and having rich white people telling you you're a bad person.
While their predecessors done exactly the same.
Rich people become gatekeepers. If everyone could be rich, then they wouldn't be so special anymore. That's why they lobby for high taxes (with appropriate loopholes, so they don't pay them, but anyone who starts from 0 won't get rich), excessive regulation (so that poor man's company will never be able to compete) and other measures to keep population "in check".
This is why we need a plan to build enough cities in the United States for a billion citizens and swap land in the “global south” for a free home and prompt citizenship. We can’t just let the world’s lungs be cut down by the logic that we made the same mistake 200 years ago.
