Carbon Offsets Are A Scam

A huge untapped market is now being realized with corporations targeted a new breed of consumer: the guilty global warming alarmist. As recently published by the NYTimes:

A largely unregulated carbon-cutting business has sprung up. In this market, consultants or companies estimate a person’s or company’s output of greenhouse gases. Then, these businesses sell “offsets,” which pay for projects elsewhere that void or sop up an equal amount of emissions — say, by planting trees or, as one new company proposes, fertilizing the ocean so algae can pull the gas out of the air. Recent counts by Business Week magazine and several environmental watchdog groups tally the trade in offsets at more than $100 million a year and growing blazingly fast.

Carbon offsets, while well intentioned, are a scam. But that isn’t stopping them from gaining traction. From standard household offsets, to airlines, to hotels, offsets are being marketed to consumers the world over. But the fact remains: They do not produce a net benefit to the environment, as is claimed by those selling such certificates. An entire industry has quickly sprung up and millions are being spent - and made - by those involved. This ranks right up there with paying a website to name a star for you - it’s a huge fraud.

Planting trees, reducing oil dependency, improving energy efficiency, and a host of other “green” ideas are great in and of themselves - few would disagree. But to do so in the name of offsetting carbon emissions is disingenuous, at best. It gives the perception that one can continue to produce carbon emissions guilt free, as they are undoing them elsewhere. This simply isn’t the case.

Furthermore, even if you buy into the premise that the offset is a legitimate way to neutralize one’s emissions, the math is, as some would say, is “fuzzy”. Unless they find ways to turn carbon dioxide from the atmosphere back into underground oil deposits, the offsets are far from neutralizing the liberated carbon. As CorporateWatch put it (emphasis mine):

‘Carbon neutral’ implies that an exact estimation of both carbon emitted and carbon locked up (or ’sequestered’), is possible and verifiable. It also implies that the carbon sequestered in trees is equivalent to the coal/gas carbon extracted from deep in the earth.

The first of these assumptions is highly contested ; and the second is just plain wrong. Claiming that carbon stored by trees is safely locked away, as it was under the earth, is simply not true. Carbon in trees is part of the active carbon pool, and moves freely between the forests, oceans and air, whereas fossil carbon is from a very inert underground carbon pool and once released cannot return to it for millennia.

They also offer yet another golden analogy:

Cambridge landscape historian Oliver Rackham described the idea of telling people to plant trees as carbon sinks as having all the practical effect of drinking more water to keep down rising sea levels .

This process of offsets gives wealthy individuals and corporations a veil of legitimacy in their continued use of fossil fuels and other carbon-emitting ways.

Even the New York Times, as mentioned previously, has gotten up to speed (Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?):

“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. “Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins.”

“This whole game is badly in need of a modern Martin Luther,” Mr. Hayes added.

As details of the lack of regulation or transparency has received increasing media scrutiny, some carbon credits companies have shunned any examination of their methods by failing to participate in research, or even more boldly, lobbying against an examination of their methods (MSNBC: Carbon offset market raises questions) (emphasis mine):

When the environmental group Clean Air-Cool Planet commissioned a study on carbon offsets, communications manager Bill Burtis was surprised to find how few groups offered transparent details of their projects or had set up any process of independently verifying their environmental benefits.

“It was pretty startling,” he said.

Some offset retailers did not even return the study’s questionnaire, and one provider, which Burtis wouldn’t identify, actually lobbied against the release of the report.

Clean Air–Cool Planet hired an independent firm to do the study because it has ties to a carbon offset provider called NativeEnergy.

If the industry won’t police itself, it appears as though congress will (Probe carbon offsets, congressmen say):

The burgeoning carbon offset industry needs more oversight, say two members of Congress. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, Republican Reps. Tom Davis of Virginia and Darrell Issa of California asked for an investigation into emission offset programs. About 60 different companies sell carbon offsets to U.S. consumers but operate under virtually no standards, the congressmen said. They cited reports alleging that some organizations get money for emissions that don’t exist and that others make large profits on cleanups that would have taken place anyway. Those who support offsets say they offer the reward of “carbon neutrality” without a reduced standard of living. To critics, offsets allow guilt-free pollution. Full Story

This carbon offset / carbon credits concept should quickly be lost on any student of science. You simply cannot undo the use of carbon once it is liberated. When engaged in marathon training, it’d be great if I could pay someone else to complete the long runs - those 20-milers are a killer - and yet still benefit from the endurance training toward my eventual goal of running the full 26.2!

Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Climate Change, Carbon Credits, Carbon Offsets, Carbon Neutral