How much do you know about carbon offsets?

Question

From the website below:

"The average American is responsible for 10 tons of CO2 emissions annually through their direct energy use at home, driving and flying. However, the average American is responsible for about 23 tons of CO2 when you also include their purchases, activities and the other services we all share throughout the economy."

Carbonfund.org claims that their goal is to make it affordable for every person or business to reduce their climate footprint to zero.

http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/why_offset/category/What%20Are%20Carbon%20Offsets/

Answer 1

For industry, they make a lot of sense. It's a way to achieve carbon reduction at the lowest cost to society. Individual transactions are large, easily regulated by the government, and industries can (and want to) verify that everything is legitimate.

For individuals, not so much. Individual transactions are tiny. The government won't want to deal with those, and individuals don't have the resources to verify that things are as claimed, and that administrative costs are appropriately low.

For individuals, it's more of a feel good kind of thing. I think there are loads better alternatives for individuals; compact fluorescent bulbs, better home insulation, more efficient heating/cooling/appliances, etc. I buy "wind power" from my utility, another transaction that I feel I can have confidence in.

The possibilities for scams here are great.

Answer 2

The idea that we can "Buy-off our carbon burden" is non-sense. Throwing money at your CO2 emissions is not going to make them go away even if every American bought 23 tons worth every year. The carbon would still be pumping out of your car just the same then as it is today. I agree with the previous poster who likened this to paying a sin-tax to the church. Do you really think that giving money to a church makes up for sin? Well, giving money to corporations is not going to stuff that CO2 back into your tailpipe either.

Answer 3

If you need your conscience massaged, then you need to cut your carbon emissions.

If you must then you can try, there's a fair chunk of red tape in the way apparently, to buy a chunk of the EU carbon quota, that way you know exactly what you're getting. Another advantage of the Kyoto treaty for y'all.

Answer 4

I know the basics about how the schemes work but I've never been a big fan of them so it's not something I've really got involved with.

Some of the schemes aren't about saving the environment but about making a tidy profit for the scheme operators. The genuine schemes usually have high operating costs and a large proportion of the money received for offsetting goes to paying bills, saleries, admin etc etc.

It's not unusual to be charged upwards of $10 to have a tree planted on your behalf. It might seem like a bargain until you relaise that you need to plant about 500 trees to go carbon neutral and that would cost anything upwards from $5,000.

If you've got that amount of money to spend you can do your own carbon offsetting. For the same amount of money we planted 50,000 trees last year, that's enough for 100 people to go carbon neutral. The cost, over time, would be the equivalent of $1 per year per person.

So yes, carbon offsetting schemes can be excellent but they don't represent value for money.

Some of the schemes do more damage than good, get it wrong by planting the wrong type of tree in the wrong climate zone and the net result is a contribution to global warming. You could end up paying out to have someone make things worse.

Better, in my opinion, to look at ways of reducing carbon emissions in the first place and then to offset the balance.

Answer 5

It is a modern scam based upon the old practice of buying indulgences from the Church. New indulgences, new church.

Answer 6

it sounds like a scam to me.