Carbon neutral practices and
Carbon Offsets are big in the news these days. The AP carried a story over the weekend:
Do Trees Make it OK to drive an SUV?. This morning I saw a news story that tallied up a business traveler's personal
carbon footprint.
What the heck is all this talk about carbon footprints and carbon neutral living? Basically the idea is that everything we do - from flying in a plane, driving a car, to what we buy, is using energy which contributes to the greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. So now someone has tallied all of these together into kilos (kg) of pollution per task or purchase.
Obviously you are not going to stop doing these things - try telling your boss that you won't fly to the business meeting because you are concerned about global warming. This all reeks of guilt and shame, like we should be sorry that we exist, buy things, etc. Heck, even this blog entry has a carbon footprint in the computer purchase and electricity. So how do we soothe our obviously guilty consciences? By buying carbon credits or offsets. That's right, now you can offset your carbon usage by purchasing carbon credits by buying trees to be planted, or investing in green energy sources like wind farms and solar power. (BTW - are we really using carbon or exhaling carbon?)
According to the news report this morning, just one long trip on a plane will require seven trees to be planted. The band ColdPlay bought an entire fruit tree orchard to be planted in India to pay for the sins of the energy used to record their latest album in the studio!
Isn't this the stuff that Hollywood actors and rich politicians and former politicians (Gore) tout, while living in big mansions and flying all over the world in private jets? Yes! Gore supposedly lives a "carbon neutral" lifestyle by giving money for tree farms and wind farms. It must be a lot of donations to offset his mega mansion, jet flights, and limousine rides.
Regardless of how you feel about global warming, this is a little fishy. Someone is making a lot of money on this. Businesses like buycarbon.com and carbonneutral.com. This all seems like the selling of indulgences from the medieval church. "Sure you can sin. Just pay the priest in advance to say a prayer." Not only I see the irony in this - the AP news article even makes the comparison.
If singular personal actions create pollution on a scale to affect global warming and changing just your personal actions could or would change the scale of global warming, then this does nothing much but soothe the conscience. Even "greenies" admit that planting a tree sapling doesn't offset much pollution until the tree is more mature. And some trees actually contribute to greenhouse gasses.
One thing that I am worried about is the application of Carbon credits as a personal, business, or national tax. There have been suggestions that nations or businesses should have maximum carbon credit limits applied. Carbon credits would be sold in a trading exchange like stock. Energy efficient companies could trade/sell their surpluses to energy hogs. How long until we see these carbon credits implemented as a personal tax?