About This Project

To prevent Earth's temperature from passing 2°C of warming and thus passing the threshold of Tipping Points (TP), I'm proposing we institutionalize voluntary Point-of-Sale (POS) carbon offsets globally, so we have a lot of money to pay to capture a lot of CO2 and trigger both ecosystem restoration and conservation towards societal TP. My hypothesis is that 8% of consumers would participate in POS carbon offsets if asked to. I'll gather data from companies that offer POS offsets to test it.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

In the face of climate change, we need to deploy a plethora of solutions to capture carbon and conserve biodiversity. To have self-propelled growth of these solutions, they need to pass a TP. To solve this need I propose POS carbon offsets to deliver this outcome; it is a creative use of the emerging theory of TP. This offset is a payment to compensate the amount of CO2 emitted to produce a product, made at the moment of purchase. The context of this project thus is to test an ambitious framework that has the potential to accelerate the rate of ecosystem restoration (and conservation). What is unique in my proposal is to make the POS carbon offsets work like a global carbon tax. While some people work to implement such a tax and depollute the industry, I think that only large scale carbon capture projects will produce the outcome we need to survive. So I'm checking POS offsets' data to understand its rate of growth and if it can impact the rate of growth of ecosystem restoration.

What is the significance of this project?

Earth’s temperature has already risen to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and is projected to reach 2.7°C by 2100 on our current policies. 2.7° C is disastrous. 25% of ocean biodiversity would be in jeopardy through the loss of 99% of coral reefs at 2°C, and many more ecosystems are in the range to tip after 2°C, like Permafrost and Amazon rainforest. Earth can go into an unmanageable heating trajectory if we reach and pass this threshold. My project will test a creative use of TP theory to verify that POS carbon offsets can lead to the growth of ecosystem conservation and restoration. The two practices compete with renewable energy, for example, in the purchase of offsets. Consumers also have biases towards projects that are either on their nation or in developing nations. But I think they can be moved towards restoration and conservation on an agenda of global carbon capture for survival, if explained to consumers its importance, as today 80% of people globally want more action.

What are the goals of the project?

The main goal of this project is to test if 8% or more of consumers will offset the carbon footprint of their purchases when asked. The more sound number is the Willingness to Pay (WTP) of consumers is between 1-10% of the product's cost, as reviewed per studies, yet there are nuances to it like income, environmental awareness. The ideal place to debate and get feedback on my idea is by attending the Global Tipping Points conference. My abstract has already been approved and this work will lay the foundation for my PhD research. Before embarking on a PhD, during 1 year I’ll gather data from real-world POS carbon offsets made through the service of companies that are already doing it (Klima, Ayden, Shopify) and explore literature on demand for carbon neutrality (already found a sound PhD thesis and a very recent work on the theme) and other related fields. I'm looking at the data of how many consumers offseted of the total number and the WTP of consumers. More about this on lab notes!