Zerofootprint Guides: Offsetting - Offsetting As A Sop To The Conscience
by Ron Dembo, Zerofootprint on 06.16.07
Carbon offsetting provokes a powerful emotional response in some people. They just don't like the idea that you can pay someone else to mop up your carbon emissions. It smacks of indulgence and cheating. Critics say buying an offset while continuing to fly, or drive an SUV, or live in a mansion with all the lights on, is at best hypocritical, and at worst, downright dangerous. It simply avoids the issue, which is that we should be reducing our carbon footprint, and simply encourages the delusion that we can go on living in an environmentally profligate way.
Some even compare offsetting with the Papal indulgences of the late Middle Ages, where Catholics were offered redemptions for their sins in return for donations to the Church – buying their way out of punishment for wrongdoing. Critics say this is exactly what modern-day carbon offsetters are trying to do. They think money will buy them a clear conscience while they continue to fill the sky with fumes.
Certain high profile stories, mainly about celebrities trying to offset carbon-intensive lifestyles, give credence to the criticisms, but it is far from the whole picture. Offsetting is something that is practiced by thousands of individuals and organizations who are neither hypocritical or delusional. Let's look at the argument more closely.
First, let's acknowledge that our number one priority must be to reduce our carbon output in every way possible – switching to a renewable energy supplier, insulating our homes, driving less, etc. But let's also acknowledge that even if this is done with the best intentions in the world, most of us will reach a point where we cannot easily, or perhaps affordably, do much more in the short term. Few of us have lived our lives entirely by environmental priorities, and most of us have woken up to climate change at a point where we inhabit houses or offices, or own cars, or hold down jobs that were never designed with carbon neutrality in mind.
Even if we take whatever steps we can to reduce, recycle and reuse now, and make a commitment that our next car will run on biofuel and that we will fit solar panels to our house, etc., most individuals or organizations endeavoring to go carbon neutral will be left with a residue of current emissions. Now we have two choices – we can ignore them or we can offset.
Ignoring them might avoid having to think through the ethical issues around offsetting, but it is not going to help the planet. On the other hand, offsetting them will ensure that as long as we continue to produce emissions, they will be counterbalanced by a saving or sequestering somewhere else. It is the environmentally responsible thing to do.
We've been talking about the residual emissions left after taking a reduction strategy as far as we can. Now let's go back to the case of the pop star or movie actor who appears to have no immediate intention of giving up flying, or selling their SUV, but who decides to offset. On the one hand, we could cry, “Hypocrite!” and denounce them for trying to buy environmental redemption. Or we could recognize that they have at least acknowledged that their lifestyle has an environmental price. For the wealthy, this price is relatively trivial at the moment if they are simply accounting for their flying or driving, but it is the start of a cultural process – a process of accepting the cost to the planet of our actions, and building this into our economy.
Over time, the cost of carbon will rise and will be factored into all the products and services we consume, and this will begin to have greater impact on our behaviour as the price differential between our old habits and a new greener lifestyle increases. Celebrities have a part to play in highlighting issues such as climate change, and in endorsing the concept that we must pay for our impact on the planet.
We need to be realistic too. Many people are going to continue to take long-haul holiday flights, drive SUVs and run high energy households no matter what anybody says. The process of persuasion and change will be slow. Denouncing people for taking a step towards environmental awareness and carbon neutrality is counterproductive. It will discourage positive action, and polarise the debate. We should be trying to move people on in their environmental thinking, not alienate them.
Some individuals and organisations will no doubt abuse offsetting in order to indulge environmentally irresponsible behaviour, but to condemn all offsetting on this basis is to overlook the best intentions and goodwill of the majority who participate. We are all trying to find a way forward with global warming. We know it will take a combination of many individual, community, corporate, government and international efforts. Offsetting has a role to play. It is empowering at the individual level. And, unlike the Papal indulgences of the past, offsetting can have a real effect in reducing the carbon levels in our atmosphere, and slowing the pace of climate change.
My main worry regarding offsets is that they be real, and not optimistically calculated or even fictional.
Who audits carbon offsets? What are the criteria? So I fly and I buy an offset and someone plants a tree. This only works if the tree grows. If it dies 10 years later or is burned in a fire, the offset is null. What if the offset company won't make good on it's service? What if it no longer exists? What if it goes broke and assets are liquidated, trees and all?
So offsets need to be certified, and they need to be insured, which means they need to be over bought. You should probably offset 200% of the carbon, under the knowledge that not all of that 200% will materialize.
100% offsets with no real guarantees are almost worse than nothing; they are an mirage.
That said, real offsets are fine by me. They are not papal indulgences; the money actually removes the carbon from the atmosphere. Some people seem to think environmentalism should be a vehicle for eliminating the advantages of being rich. While I certainly think income distribution around the world should be better balanced, and that poverty itself causes environmental problems, mixing agendas is politically unwise and should be done only when it is unavoidable in specific issues.
In other words, the rich get to do more stuff. Get over it.
How about just starting to call carbon offsets by their more realistic name "donations"? Everyone likes the idea of making a donation to some worthy cause, right? And it would be a good way to help people be a little more attentive to exactly who they are donating their money to, and what the recipient spends it on.
So, yeah, I propose making the term "carbon offsets" passe, just like the term "alternative transportation" is becoming. Say what it IS, not what it isn't. "Carbon Offsets" are really donations for a sustainable future, and "alternative transportation" is really just transportation.
Ok, go!
Thank you for a thorough and level-headed entry about offsets, it is a rarity in the green blogosphere these days.
I have a genuine question that I would appreciate all answers to: how is purchasing offsets, paritcularly if done prior to actual emissions, any different than reducing consumption? Presume that in both cases, the greenhouse gas emissions are effected by the same amount. And also, limit the discussion to activities like driving or flying. It seems like for this type of consumption, offsets are absolutely equivalent to conservation.
So much of the discussion in green blogs focuses around the morality of consumption. Witness your reference to "awakening" to climate change, as one might awaken to the presence of a supreme being, or to issues of inequality among races or genders. But in the emissions case, there is no morality involved. If greenhouse gases are not increased, then it seems the consumption is entirely amoral. I guess I understand the morality argument, but it doesn't seem entirely logical. So someone please enlighten me!
Lets say the average cigarette smoker payed an additional tax to offset their second hand smoke and that money would go to public health care. Does that make smoking healthy, or justifiable? If fact, many states have a tax set up to do just that. But the answer is No ,smoking is still an unhealthy habit, that still kills people. SO does offsetting your SUV's unhealthy habit, make driving one healthy or justifiable?
Thank you, Ron, for bringing up both sides of this green coin.
You are right ~ there is great meaning in carbon offsetting by creating positive change somewhere on the planet AND there is also the personal responsibility for lowering one's personal and business "usage" and impact on Mother Earth to start with.
Together with my co-author Jennifer S. Wilkov on The Green Guide Girls: Guide to Book Publishing, we are educating authors and publishers through quick information and simple steps how to make their books GREEN. We are the bridge between the entire book publishing industry and ecologically responsible resources available to make their book projects environmentally friendly.
My Dream Tree Team™ at Plant a Tree USA™ is dedicated to billions of tree plantings and educating millions. It is our pleasure to offer individuals the opportunity to plant trees in memory and in honor of loved ones and special events. And, since commerce and business growth is a key to solution, we have an elite corporate program to take environmental responsibility and partnership in education to a grand new GREEN level.
I continue to learn about living green passionately in order to share my research with the mass market, for our kids and our planet.
Your enlightenment of carbon offsetting is truly important for everyone to understand. First of all - what is carbon offsetting really! And second, how about reducing the impact so there is less to offset.
Ron, your clear, fresh, and fair outlook is commended.
You are welcome on our teams!
Thank you.
Be well and prosper green!
Warmly,
Cindy Katz
'Tree Angel'
Co-Creator, Green Guide Girls™
CEO/Founder, Plant a Tree USA™
Thank you, Ron, for bringing up both sides of this green coin.
You are right ~ there is great meaning in carbon offsetting by creating positive change somewhere on the planet AND there is also the personal responsibility for lowering one's personal and business "usage" and impact on Mother Earth to start with.
Together with my co-author Jennifer S. Wilkov on The Green Guide Girls: Guide to Book Publishing, we are educating authors and publishers through quick information and simple steps how to make their books GREEN. We are the bridge between the entire book publishing industry and ecologically responsible resources available to make their book projects environmentally friendly.
My Dream Tree Team™ at Plant a Tree USA™ is dedicated to billions of tree plantings and educating millions. It is our pleasure to offer individuals the opportunity to plant trees in memory and in honor of loved ones and special events. And, since commerce and business growth is a key to solution, we have an elite corporate program to take environmental responsibility and partnership in education to a grand new GREEN level.
I continue to learn about living green passionately in order to share my research with the mass market, for our kids and our planet.
Your enlightenment of carbon offsetting is truly important for everyone to understand. First of all - what is carbon offsetting really! And second, how about reducing the impact so there is less to offset.
Ron, your clear, fresh, and fair outlook is commended.
You are welcome on our teams!
Thank you.
Be well and prosper green!
Warmly,
Cindy Katz
'Tree Angel'
Co-Creator, Green Guide Girls™
CEO/Founder, Plant a Tree USA™
>I guess I understand the morality argument, but it doesn't
>seem entirely logical. So someone please enlighten me!
There is a strong case to be made for less consumption on general environmental grounds. You can offset the carbon from the oil you consume, but the oil still has to be extracted, shipped, and so forth. For every barrel of oil that goes through the production process, some spillage will occur, and the capacity to process it is required. Hence, there is pressure on the environment in terms of larger (or more) refineries and water pollution.
Nearly all consumption has similar effects. Mostly, it's about habitat loss. Even if you detoxify industry (far from having been done yet, but possible), it still takes up a lot of space.
But habitat loss is not a mainstream issue right now, and mixing agendas carries certain risks. Basically, you can only sell one major message at a time. Also, I don't like pseudo-religious language. We can, and should, use words such as morality and ethics, because there is a ethical imperative in not stealing from future generations and a moral one in respecting other forms of life on Earth.
But I dread getting into a situation where we start getting "born-again greens" preaching gospel. As right-wing Christian fundamentalists are learning, there are some basic limits to the effectiveness of a "holier than thou" approach to advocacy.
Ron,
I agree. It is a good idea and we shouldn't be easy to dismiss the idea just because there are a few selfish people out there that will take advantage of the idea. There will always be those that take advantage of good things, but there will always be the rest of us who don't and thats what we have to keep in mind.
But we shouldn't be quick to accept the idea either. It isn't the solution to the problem. It just one more way of working towards solving it. In other words we shouldn't depend on it. We should just add it to the list of green possibilities we have to be and live green. Together that should make the difference.
Offsets are a useful method under capitalism, which, like insurance, limited liability and other traditions, keep more economic balls in the air. Those are good things, because they keep human activity hoppin' and limit economic stagnation.
That being said, they should be carefully assessed and supervised, just like insurance and securities have state and national regulators who stop monkeyshines by bad actors. (Hopefully...) Nor of course are they compulsory, at least in the US.
And the result is, however, not necessarily any more fair to the people at the bottom of the pile, and favors those institutions and people who have had a head start. People in poorer countries can't afford to pay any offset, because they can barely afford to buy the product in the first place.
That's normal with capitalism, although only recently, in the 70s and 80s, did economists like Brian Arthur and Kenneth Arrow really explore this post-modern economic phenomenon of increasing returns in depth.
It was kind of a heretical idea in modern economics, that the earliest actor into the market was always going to be bigger and take more of a share than later entrants.To me, at least, it highlights the need for a government supervision of the free market system that has teeth, with real progressive tax rates, regulation whever necessary, strong support for safety nets and universal public schooling, etc, all of which can clearly exist healthily alongside the right to unfettered use of private property.
Anthonares above points out above that it's an open question whether offsets have any effect on limiting consumption, and it's probably the case that, if they were imposed everywhere, the limiting effect on consumption would be smallest in the countries most able to pay for it.
However, I suggest that we not focus on limiting its consumption, rather it's bad effects. This is the solution most readily adaptable to modern life.
The problem that will arise there, however, is not going to be minimal. Basically if we buy massive carbon offsets by planting trees, etc, we're going to eventualy limit the amount of land being used for agriculture, and since we're likely to plant trees where land is cheapest, the poorest people are likely to be limited in their ability to farm. This is already a problem in the third world, where wildlife preseves and national forests are routinely invaded by agriculture.
Thanks for the great article.
One thing about carbon offsetting always bothers me, the 'credits'.
Say for example, John makes a donation to some organisation that builds windfarms, he gets credit for reducing emissions. But what about Jack, who buys power from the windfarm, he gets a clear consience for buying renewable energy. So thats two people taking credit for the same thing.
Anyway, just my thoughts.
Purchasing offsets is different from conservation in some ways:
1. If I fly to NZ having paid to plant trees/provide clean stoves/whatever, I will have flown away and made my bit of pollution long before the trees grow, or the stoves' clean-ness makes any real difference. The time delay might be years, during which CO_2 levels are bound to rise, possibly past some critical level.
2. Having paid my dues, how can I be absolutely sure that the project happens? Particularly as it seems to be popular to carry out this type of project in the 1/3 world, where so many projects launched from the rich world fail to deliver as expected.
3. And how do I know that the said trees would not have been planted anyway??
I'm not slamming offsets, I'm only saying that they're not as immediate as conservation.
I think that there are two other important things to consider in the carbon offset debate.
The first is the fact that not all offsetting programs are created equal. Offsetting by destroying old growth forests / ecosystems to make way for monocultures in developing countries where the plantations eventually fall into disarry and no longer store any CO2 are not good.
The second thing to consider, and closely related to the first, is that growing a tree is no substitute for leaving carbon locked in the ground as fossil fuels. The carbon is being released - at a rapid rate to boot - into the atmosphere and becoming part of the problem.