People who currently buy humanely-produced eggs usually also buy non-humanely-produced eggs because those are ingridients in various other products they buy.
You’re suggesting that even though (as my last paragraph argues) those persons would prefer to buy individually-humanely-produced eggs, there are situations where that isn’t a realistic option and they would buy inhumaneness-offset certificates as the best available alternative? Maybe. I still can’t see that being terribly popular, though. Would they go out for a meal, get home, make an estimate of how many eggs were used in the production of the meal, and go and transfer $5.50 to Humane Egg Offsets, Inc.? I mean, maybe they would but I’m guessing that would be rare. More likely is that they estimate how many eggs they consume “indirectly” and make a donation once a year, or something like that. But then the direct association between consuming inhumanely-produced eggs and buying offsets isn’t there, which means the system is less responsive to changes in how many eggs people consume, which seems like it makes it work less well.
How many people buy carbon offsets when they do polluting things, and make any sort of serious effort to match their offset-buying to their polluting activities? (I don’t know how good an analogy this actually is; my guess is that carbon offsets are less demonstrably effective offsets than these inhuman-egg offsets are intended to be. But they are a thing, and my impression is that to an excellent first-order approximation no individuals buy them, and that seems like it’s relevant.)
For example, carbon offset vendors offer direct purchase of carbon offsets, often also offering other services such as designating a carbon offset project to support or measuring a purchaser’s carbon footprint. In 2016, about $191.3 million of carbon offsets were purchased in the voluntary market, representing about 63.4 million metric tons of CO2e. In 2018 and 2019 the voluntary carbon market transacted 98 and 104 million metric tons of CO2e respectively.
Aren’t those $191.3M of carbon offsets almost all being purchased by businesses that do directly CO2-emitting things? That’s my impression, though I don’t have any actual numbers to back it up or anything. The equivalent of the inhumane-egg-production offsets being proposed here would be carbon offsets bought by consumers.
(Also, although 100M tons of CO2-equivalent sounds like a lot, that’s about 1⁄500 of total annual emissions.)
People who currently buy humanely-produced eggs usually also buy non-humanely-produced eggs because those are ingridients in various other products they buy.
You’re suggesting that even though (as my last paragraph argues) those persons would prefer to buy individually-humanely-produced eggs, there are situations where that isn’t a realistic option and they would buy inhumaneness-offset certificates as the best available alternative? Maybe. I still can’t see that being terribly popular, though. Would they go out for a meal, get home, make an estimate of how many eggs were used in the production of the meal, and go and transfer $5.50 to Humane Egg Offsets, Inc.? I mean, maybe they would but I’m guessing that would be rare. More likely is that they estimate how many eggs they consume “indirectly” and make a donation once a year, or something like that. But then the direct association between consuming inhumanely-produced eggs and buying offsets isn’t there, which means the system is less responsive to changes in how many eggs people consume, which seems like it makes it work less well.
How many people buy carbon offsets when they do polluting things, and make any sort of serious effort to match their offset-buying to their polluting activities? (I don’t know how good an analogy this actually is; my guess is that carbon offsets are less demonstrably effective offsets than these inhuman-egg offsets are intended to be. But they are a thing, and my impression is that to an excellent first-order approximation no individuals buy them, and that seems like it’s relevant.)
Yes, people would likely do bulk offsets and not buy them day by day. At something like 4$ per dozen eggs few single meals would amount to $5.50.
According to Wikipedia:
Aren’t those $191.3M of carbon offsets almost all being purchased by businesses that do directly CO2-emitting things? That’s my impression, though I don’t have any actual numbers to back it up or anything. The equivalent of the inhumane-egg-production offsets being proposed here would be carbon offsets bought by consumers.
(Also, although 100M tons of CO2-equivalent sounds like a lot, that’s about 1⁄500 of total annual emissions.)