For example, could alternative terms like “carbon reducing” and “carbon increasing” make it more clear and avoid misinterpreting which means which?
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Ngl I’ve never heard anyone ever refer to “carbon negative” as “carbon positive” in my entire life until today.
Literally never heard “carbon positive” and I’ve been following this space since before some of you were born. Smells like some bullshit to me.
I’ve seen it, I think, on some brand of milk, where the advertising on their bottles said they planned to go “carbon positive” by some year. Unless they were just being intentionally sneaky in an attempt to sound good while promising to do nothing.
I don’t get where you think those terms are confusing.
Not OP, but I imagine “carbon negative” sounds negative because it has the word “negative” in it.
When it fact “carbon negative” means you’re reducing carbon, which is generally regarded as a positive thing.
Sounds like a millennial marketing team to me! 🤷🏻‍♂️
“Negative feedback loop? That sounds bad!”
I agree it’s time for people to be able to comprehend words again.
It sounds like OP has heard people say “carbon negative” to mean that something outputs more CO2 than it consumes, and vice versa, which is contrary to how I hear the terms used.
“Our approach to carbon is negative for the planet”
Though I agree it’s not really used in this way.
You’ve probably heard people use the term wrong.
Carbon Capturing and Carbon Emitting?
How about “positive carbon negativity” and “negative carbon positivity”? As a bonus, this allows us extra terms such as “negative carbon negativity” and “positive carbon positivity” which can be similarly confused for each other!
(On a more serious note, “carbon reducing” and “carbon increasing” are good.)
I thought about this for a while, but can’t think of any term that is sufficiently specific, easy to understand, and can’t be greenwashed away.
Maybe more terms isn’t what we need?
Anti- carbon negative and anti-carbon positive.
“AC -“ would be “bad” and “AC +” would be “good”
Sounds like bookkeeping where you have to know what half the book you are on before you decide if the negative sign is good money or debt.
Carbon credit and debit in double entry book keeping. Genius. It’s likely how an actual carbon credit system would work and the entire reason for the confusion.
“This plant is carbon bad while ours is carbon good.”
(Net) reducer/increaser make sense, yes. I haven’t seen “carbon positive” a lot: in reality, we assume most of our activity frees CO2 (or whatever else), so it’s almost redundant to point out. When it doesn’t, or actually causes a net reduction in whatever pollutant, that’s a Big Deal and we needed a term for it. There’s not much practical room for confusion: same as how a “positive” medical finding might be really bad news, it’s all context.