Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephenbez | Hacker News Reader

It seems like if you want kids and are very concerned about climate change you can do both. Just purchase carbon offsets.

By my own calculations, it looks like offsetting 100% of an American's carbon footprint costs $55/month.

Sources:

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/survey-of-carbon-...

http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/carbon-offset-p...

9,441 metric tons of carbon * $5.5 /metric ton / 936 month average lifespan = $55 / month

View on HN

Sounds like the equivalent of buying a pardon for your sins from the Pope.

"Carbon offsets" are not actually sold by the environment itself -- they are just based on limits bureaucrats put in place after much deliberation, calculated conveniently enough to still allow for our current levels of consumption and pollution.

You can also purchase infidelity offsets: http://cheatneutral.com/

Possibly a more direct way to offset increasing the population would be to donate to things that improve living standards and the amount of control women have over their lives in countries which currently have a high birth rate.

That's very rational of you but boy do people love a good morality play. If you solved CO2 storage with a new technology you'd be stoned to death by a pack of wild journalists with copies of Evgeny Morozov's books.

I'll go one further on the slippery morality slope: What if carbon credits could be used to pay for permanent birth control (voluntarily! it must always be voluntarily!).

Based on the math above, you'd pay a woman $51480 to have her tubes tied.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com