Sounds ridiculous to me, but for the sake of being open minded, someone please tell me this is more than paying someone to plant trees in the rainforest.
2007-02-27 07:44:37 · 3 answers · asked by MithrilHawk 4 in Environment
Yes it is much more than planting trees! The idea of most carbon trading schemes is an OVERALL reduction in emissions at least economic cost. So under Kyoto and the Clean Development Mechanism, for example, a power plant in Italy can buy carbon credits by investing in cleaning up a power plant in China. The global overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions is reduced - but locally, the Italians living near the power plant will not get any reduction in greenhouse gases.
Most consumer-level offset schemes will use the carbon credits generated by such Kyoto/CDM schemes - they will buy, say, a million tonnes carbon credits wholesale on a market such as the European Trading Scheme (for around EUR1 per tonne today, although the price varies hourly and was as high as EUR30 last year) and sell them on by the tonne to individuals as carbon offsets for profit. So check the price!
As for schemes which promise to plant trees - check them out carefully. It's very easy to plant 100,000 saplings, much harder to maintain and grow the resulting forest. If the organisation has no forestry management skills, forget it.
2007-02-27 12:21:08 · answer #1 · answered by hatbang57 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You pretty much got it. It is a way for hypocrits to pretend that they aren't doing what they are telling you not to do. When you are Al Gore or a movie star that live in a mansion that uses 20 times the power of most, they pay some money to someone and pretend to be doing their part. What is worse than them being hypocrits is so many gullible people believe what they say.
2007-02-27 07:48:17 · answer #2 · answered by JimZ 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Go live in a third world country. Oh wait that is what they are trying to turn the US into.
2007-02-27 07:50:00 · answer #3 · answered by dennis s 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋