That still isn't very expensive in terms of offsets - about $10/year (Terrapass sells the offsets for $4.99 per 1,000 lbs). Why do you think that's astronomical?
I was coming from the other end. I've repeated seen claims that livestock contributes a significant fraction of global greenhouse emissions. eg. most recently, a claim of 17% in this article https://a16z.com/2019/12/30/life-in-2030/ from HN yesterday.
I assumed that eg. 17% of the global total meant the individual allocation would be large, and thus very expensive to offset.
Note that there's a CH4 vs. CO2 conflation in the mix here, which probably doesn't help.
But it still doesn't seem to add up: if I can eat a "meat lovers" diet and that's only $10/year to offset, and it's roughly 15% of global emissions, that'd suggest that around $70/year could offset 100% of global emissions.
Well, no. The difference between an average American diet (2.5T) and a vegan diet (1.5T) is ~$10/yr to offset. In total, a "meat lovers" diet (3.3T) would be about $33/year to offset. If that's about 15%, that works out to about $220/year per individual offset on the high side, which is consistent with what I purchase.
