Famous at last! Boy do I wish I'd gotten a haircut though. At least my lady looks good, though they mis-spelled her name...

And for the record, I did check out which offset company to use pretty carefully, and was at pains to tell the reporter that offsetting for me is by no means a ticket to guilt-free pollution.

Wow Sami - that's great. I have a tendency for trans-Atlantic/trans-continental relationships (MS to Ireland, Ireland to MS and MS to MN...). I'd never thought of offsetting my air travel - but now I'm going to! Thanks!

Sami, if you're going to fly, fly for love.
A note on the original article: I know there are some deeply-held objections against forestation projects used as offsets, and that some of them are fairly serious (though none of them, in my estimation, convincingly indict trees as a bulwark against climate change). However, the objections raised in the NYT just don't make sense to me. Here's what the article says: "Scientists and environmentalists tend to agree, however, that mass plantings are among the least effective initiatives for offsetting carbon footprints." A pretty broad statement, I'd say. The arguments marshalled to make the case, however, are paper-thin. It is one thing to cite a single example to make a general argument, but in this case the example doesn't even speak to the allegation. The GreenSeat project in Uganda seems to have been plagued by violence and attrition to the trees. I don't know whether that is the case or not, but even if the most daming allegations are true, they don't affect the viability of forestation as a means of capturing and storting carbon. Whenever there is an accounting or corporate governance scandal in the US, we don't hear calls for the abolishment of accounting. We hear instead that we need watertight rules in place. Offsets (whether renewable energy or forestation) would benefit from a similarly enforced certification regime (that ensured not only that a verifiable amount of carbon was being sequestered, but that projects were managed ethically). But just as we don't want to get rid of all the accountants, we don't want to do away with trees either. The fact is that they are the only known mechanism for soaking up carbon (apart from the oceasn, and we're not going to plant more oceans), and they are being decimated with each passing day. So let's give the poor trees a break.

Offsetting with trees has the major problem of the fast that it is temporary. Whether the tree blows down in a storm in 5 years, is burned (for heat one hopes) in 15 years, falls down naturally in 50 years, or is locked in a house (as a building material) for 200, eventually it will release the carbon dioxide stored in it. Not that planting trees doesn't have a bunch of other benefits, but I hope to be around in 50 years, and so do a whole lot of people (or future people).

Trees are all too temporary--just look at how diffiuclt it is to stop people from cutting them down (something offsets can help with). But the temporary nature of trees is not in itself a daming argument against them. For one thing, a properly managed forest can "park" carbon for decades or longer--in other words, the time-frame we have to figure out a long-term solution. Second, not all of carbon released through decomposition is released into the atmosphere; much is taken up by the soil. Also, other trees can be planted or will naturally regenerate) before the mature trees die. Finally, as short as a tree's life is when measured against the entirety of the future, it is in fact much longer than, say, a wind turbine's. Really, all solutions are temporary, and as fragile as trees may be, they're not the shortest-lived.

Last month the UK government drew up a set of standards for the Carbon Offsetting industry. At the time only 4 offsetting schemes met the standards (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6273061.stm), though to be fair the industry got no warning! So more schemes might be up-to-standard by now.

I'm a fan of planting trees, but for other reasons: for example a record-breaking wood on the Indian coast saved the inhabitants of an entire village, and the land on which they lived, from the 2004 Tsunami http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4269847.stm

Hello,

I thought you might be interested in this new report that is available online

The Carbon Neutral Myth – Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins is available online at:
www.tni.org

Carbon offsets are the modern day indulgences, sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sins. Scratch the surface, however, and a disturbing picture emerges, where creative accountancy and elaborate shell games cover up the impossibility of verifying genuine climate change benefits, and where communities in the South often have little choice as offset projects are inflicted on them.

This report argues that offsets place disproportionate emphasis on individual lifestyles and carbon footprints, distracting attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches involves moving away from the marketing gimmicks, celebrity endorsements, technological quick fixes, and the North/South exploitation that the carbon offsets industry embodies.