On the other hand, meat offsets are a direct cost to the meat eater. They are increasing the cost of meat to that consumer.
I'd be surprised if offset costs[1] not incurred at the point of sale meaningfully impacted consumption. People respond far less to fees when they're less salient at the point of sale.[2]
...of a similar magnitude to the ones suggested by Farmkind, for example. If offset costs were, conversely, large enough to require someone to mortgage their home in order to eat a slice of pecorino, you'd see an effect
See also: Chetty, Looney & Kroft (2009, AER): Including taxes in the price shown in stores decreased consumption (n.b. for non-Americans, in the US, store sales prices do not general display the price inclusive of taxes), even though people were paying the same price!
Finkelstein (2009, QJE): When toll roads were converted from manual (i.e. you have to physically fork over money to get through a toll) to automatic (i.e. you're just charged after the fact by your license plate/a radio transponder), people increased their use of toll roads
Yeah, that's an interesting empirical question: are offsets too "cognitively distant" from the purchase to make a difference.
That said, in your Finkelstein example, We're basically talking about making an additional cost less visible, whereas in the offsetting situation, the cost is pretty visible to them, as they have to calculate it.
“ However, as FarmKind’s theory of change is offsets” — it isn’t though. It’s counterfactual donations to animal charities, and the vast majority of donations they raise are not made through their offsetting tool. It’s one way to donate (and not the main one), not their theory of change
It’s probably also worth clarifying that I’m not aware of anyone that offers a way of offset consumption by causing less consumption. I am aware of ways to try offset suffering from consumption by causing less suffering from consumption :)
Carbon offsetting doesn't work even if it is a legit offset. Carbon offsetting is a scientifically flawed concept. We extract carbon in the form of fossil fuels that took millions of years to get deep in the earth, and offset it with carbon captured on the surface of the earth which will still take millions more years to return to form of the carbon we 'offsetted'. (see source for this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1804). I think that meat offsets are similarly flawed. At the end of the day you still harmed someone.
The reasons you provided don't strike me as "scientifically" flawed. If the goal is to draw down equivalent carbon to what you released, then it doesn't matter that it's a different tree or how long it was captured. It's not the form of carbon we're interested in. It's literally just removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
I do take your point, though, that we might broaden our perspective on carbon offsetting and consider more than just the tonnes of carbon taken out of the atmosphere: the replacement of ancient forest with new forest is a different but real problem.
Back to the post, though. I don't see how any of this really relates to meat offsetting? aFrom your brief reply, it sounds like you're opposed to the idea that "I can inflict harm here and reduce harm there, and call it even." have I understood you correctly?
Hi Richie, my understanding from the Nature article is that there's a limited amount of carbon we can store on the earth's surface. If we continue to extract it from under the earth's surface it at a faster rate than it can be sequestered back under the earth's surface then we can't really plan to offset it all. I'm not an expert in the field so not sure if I understand it all correctly, but the article in Nature is pretty convincing.
Yeah, regarding the meat offsets, I don't agree that it is moral to do harm and then 'offset' it by doing something good. If this were the case - then should we have human slavery? One human slave could make a whole family's life better by doing their cooking, cleaning etc. and looking after them. Should we kill healthy 18-year-old humans to harvest their organs? Organ donations from one human body can improve the lives of up to 70 other humans. If we aim to do 'net good' rather than 'good', we might even say it's immoral not to do these things.
Offsetting meat consumption does not suffer the issues that offsetting carbon emissions has
Crossposted to Less Wrong
‘Like most of life’s dangers, the dangers of artificial intelligence are not easily identified from the armchair.’
J Dmitri Gallow
Epistemic status
I’m not an expert in this field, and herein I make some sweeping generalisations educated guesses about the overall...
Thanks to Bruce Friedrich, Seth Ariel Green, Tobias Leenaert, Jan Willem Bolderdijk, Martine van Haperen, Herman Rohrbach, Chris Popa and Elizabeth Alvarez for comments. Claude helped structure the text. Ideas and mistakes are my own. I currently work with ProVeg International. The prize I propose would be defined and judged by an independent committee, and its money would fund scaling the winning solution(s), not ProVeg or the winner.
TL/DR
* EA could d...
This post is part of the Rethink Priorities Cross-Cause Fund (CCF) series on how to allocate funding across causes when it is uncertain what matters most.
...
EDIT: removed claims that FarmKind's main ToC is offsets. This is not true (see Aidans comment below).
As far as I'm aware, most people feel carbon offsetting largely hasn't worked. Does that mean offsetting meat consumption is a dead-end?
I argue no. If we look at the 2 main reasons why carbon offsetting has failed to reach it's potential, we can see that meat offsetting does not have these problems. As a result, meat offsetting may be an effective strategy to reduce animal suffering.
Caveat before we begin
Here I am discussing a very narrow question, which is whether the failure of carbon offsets tells us that meat offsets will not work. There are wider debates to be had around meat offsetting, such as whether it is morally permissible. I’m not commenting on that here, and I’ve seen good arguments on both sides.
This should also not be taken as an endorsement of FarmKind’s “Forget Veganuary” campaign they ran earlier this year. Evaluating that campaign involves a lot more than just offsetting, and I have nuanced thoughts about it that I won’t go into here. However, as FarmKind does have a tool that allows people to offset their consumption, this post can be taken as a defence of the idea behind that.
1. Most carbon offsetting companies are basically scams
This scam risk does not apply to meat offsetting, at least in the case of FarmKind. they send offsetting donations go to 3rd party evaluated organisations that I am very confident do reduce demand for meat or reduce animal suffering or both. See them here. Similarly, FarmKind themselves are not conducting the evaluations. They are relying on independent evaluators (e.g. Animal Charity Evaluators) who have a good track record of estimating impact as accurately as feasible.
So long as you donate to effective animal charities to offset meat consumption, there is no scam.
2. Carbon offsetting reduces the incentive to lower one’s carbon footprint and may actually drive people to increase their emissions (aka “moral licensing”)
First, the evidence for moral licensing is weaker than it sounds. A 2025 review of 115 experiments found it only showed up when people were being watched. When nobody was watching, the evidence pointed to no effect at all. Moral licensing is by no means a “psychological fact” that many people seem to believe.
Second, many offsetting programmes don’t increase the cost to consumers, which I think is crucial for them to work. It's intuitive to me that for offsetting to change behaviour, consumer must actually have to pay their own money for offsetting. For example, some carbon offsetting programmes from airline companies did not charge consumers the extra money to offset their emissions, or didn’t charge the full cost. Instead, the airline bore some/all of that cost. It’s obvious why that wouldn’t get consumers to reduce emissions, because in a very real way you haven’t imposed a cost on them.
Meat offsets probably do reduce meat consumption
On the other hand, meat offsets are a direct cost to the meat eater. They are increasing the cost of meat to that consumer. And people eat less meat when it gets more expensive. Whilst I haven’t seen a direct study on meat offsets, I’d argue there is stronger indirect evidence that it would work. This means that meat offsets could have a double benefit: reducing consumption of meat at the individual level and at the systemic level through donations.
Summary
Carbon offsetting failed because most carbon offsetting companies were scams. Orgs that meat offsets go to are checked by independent evaluators, so they are very unlikely to be scams.
The evidence that carbon offsets or any offsets cause people to increase consumption is weak; however meat offsets increase the price of meat to consumers, which we know reduces meat consumption. We should expect that meat offsets will reduce meat consumption.
I'd be surprised if offset costs[1] not incurred at the point of sale meaningfully impacted consumption. People respond far less to fees when they're less salient at the point of sale.[2]
...of a similar magnitude to the ones suggested by Farmkind, for example. If offset costs were, conversely, large enough to require someone to mortgage their home in order to eat a slice of pecorino, you'd see an effect
See also:
Chetty, Looney & Kroft (2009, AER): Including taxes in the price shown in stores decreased consumption (n.b. for non-Americans, in the US, store sales prices do not general display the price inclusive of taxes), even though people were paying the same price!
Finkelstein (2009, QJE): When toll roads were converted from manual (i.e. you have to physically fork over money to get through a toll) to automatic (i.e. you're just charged after the fact by your license plate/a radio transponder), people increased their use of toll roads
Yeah, that's an interesting empirical question: are offsets too "cognitively distant" from the purchase to make a difference.
That said, in your Finkelstein example, We're basically talking about making an additional cost less visible, whereas in the offsetting situation, the cost is pretty visible to them, as they have to calculate it.