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Carbon Offsetting

Hi,

How many people here agree/ disagree with CO2 offsetting?

For those of you who do not know:

Carbon offsetting is the process by which one organisation producing x tonnes of CO2 can pay another organisation to reduce their emissions by the equivalent amount effectively negating the net CO2 release. The company can pay a farmer to plant plants taking in CO2, or if my car produced 10 tonnes of CO2 per annum I could pay someone to reduce their CO2 output by 10 tonnes at the same time.

What do people think? I agree with this, because it can provide money for poorer areas trying to reduce CO2 whilst negating the CO2 effect.

Do you agree with the idea?

Reply 1

20083

What are you asking? If we believe it's happening? If we agree with it?

Reply 2

20083

Laith

Do you agree with the idea?

Erm... Sure. Why wouldn't I? Doesn't cost me anything.

Reply 3

QuantumTheory

I agree if they actually plant the damn trees.
But some companies do stuff like give out packs for schools and stuff, which I disagree with. It's not offestting anything at all. The airline I flew with last year offered that and I was like 'no ta', I'll pay for trees to be planted.

Why would you disagree?

Reply 4

Antithesis

Climate change is too serious for us to make poor decisions. Regarding offsetting, there is an important distinction to be made between types: tree-planting and helping funding renewables. Tree-planting is fantastic in itself (restoring habitats, etc.), but don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'offsetting'. It takes several decades (almost a century, I think) for a tree to 'absorb' all the CO2 of a single flight. By then, climate change will have spiralled out of control. The flaw is that they do something called 'future value accounting' (i.e. declaring all future 'profits', in this case offsets, as achieved immediately). You feel as though you have countered your pollution, when, in reality, you seriously haven't. That is not to say, however, that afforestation isn't a brilliant thing in itself, and, of course, protecting the rainforests hardly needs much justifying. (We have a moral duty now to attempt to save the remaining vestiges of wildnerness.) By the way, protection is different entirely: if you cut down a tree, you effectively release its CO2, which isn't too fantastic.

A better bet than planting trees is to help fund renewables (I think there are quite a few offsetting companies that can do this). The gain is far more immediate. Although, if you really want to bite the bullet and go for it (which we should!), we've got to make the hard choice not to fly, etc., in the first place. Offsetting should be a last resort. Really.