NPR Reports on, Fumbles Story on FTC's Investigation of Carbon Offsets
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 01. 4.08
Photo credit: davesag
From NPR's All Things Considered, we learn that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will begin to take a closer look at the "booming, unregulated 'carbon offset' market." We like to hear that there will be more regulation and heavier auditing coming to a market that has simply exploded in the past 18 months, and can be a bit vague and difficult to verify. Getting quality offsets now requires homework -- probably more homework than the average concerned citizen is likely to do -- so, if done correctly, standards and auditing would be a good thing. The FTC will be looking most specifically at verifying "double selling" and additionality. Stay tuned; hearings are scheduled to get underway next week.
What we don't like is NPR's myopic point of view on carbon offsets: that they're tools for those feeling guilty about their carbon footprint. "There is something new to feel guilty about: carbon," they say. "The guilty can now buy something called a 'carbon offset.' Essentially, you pay someone else to reduce or 'offset' carbon emissions equal to your own." While the second sentence is true, to characterize offsets as simply a tool for the guilty to help themselves feel better is shortsighted and naive.
Moreover, to suggest that we should feel guilty about our individual or collective carbon footprint is the sort of "gloom and doom" environmentalism that has paralyzed individuals and muted businesses' efforts. Characterizing offsets as an extension of this guilt serves to neither inspire people to change their behavior nor to use offsets as they should be used: as a way to promote a less carbon-intensive future while mopping up whatever we can't reduce first.
Tsk, tsk, NPR. Have a peek at TreeHugger's How to Green Your Carbon Offsets guide, and please be more responsible in the future. ::All Things Considered
Before admonishing NPR, you ought to advance a decent counter-argument. While pollution-credit markets are a good idea in theory, carbon off-setting markets are not clearly so in practise. Dismissing the critique that these markets for CO2 are merely guilt-assuagers for the wealthy is valid only if these markets work in environmental terms. From what I have read, the opposite is truer, with uneconomic factories that were being shuttered anyway getting to sell their credits, even East bloc factories that only existed on paper, and scant oversight of new off-setting projects. Sure these markets are a business and PR success. But at a certain point we ought to see that both environmental under-regulation, personal over-consumption and unpriced pollution costs are equal parts of the problem; which means that moral codes, especially voluntary ones, are an ineffectual response. Are off-setters buying the illusion of "mopping up" which only lessens guilt temporarily, until the truth is outed? If so, we then risk creating a deeper despair. We need results, not just good intentions.
Well said Brendan.
Offsetters turn feelings - guilt, hope - into cash, this is the universal underlying business model. Why do the Concerned continually fail to grasp the equation?
Well said Brendan.
Offsetters turn feelings - guilt, hope - into cash, this is the universal underlying business model. Why do the Concerned continually fail to grasp the equation?
We feel the same way about the NPR story. Check out our most recent blog post on the subject: carbonfund.blogspot.com.
-Russell
Carbonfund.org
Assuming the offsets are legitimate and verifiable then whether or not they are used to assuage guilt is irrelevant. The end result is that additional carbon was sequested. Had the 'guilty' party not paid for that offset they would still have emmitted the same or even more carbon...and the offset would not have happened without the payment so the net result is less carbon in the atmosphere regardless of the moral implications. Additionally, anyone purchasing offsets generally does so after assesing their emmisions and taking steps to REDUCE them. First you assess, then you reduce, then you offset that which you cannot effectively reduce to become carbon neutral.