Watching a bunch of conservative pilots talk about Al Gore and global warming, I think a lot of them should be selling “Intelligence Credits”, since they’re obviously not using theirs.
9 thoughts on “Carbon credits? How about…”
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Everything I used to bore people on newsgroups and mailing lists with, now in one inconvenient place.
Many travel agencies and airlines are starting to partner with carbon offset credit people. In general, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. If you hunt around, you can find reasonably priced carbon credits from places like http://www.carbonfund.org. If you decide to buy carbon offset credits, try to avoid those that use tree planting/reforestation as the means of offsetting the carbon. It’s generally considered the least-effective means of dealing with carbon dioxide. I bought someone 6 tonnes of carbon offset credits for their birthday recently, which was enough to make them carbon neutral for a year.
Sorry, but carbon offsets are bullshit. A good summary is “The Carbon Neutral Myth”, available here:
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/
Doesn’t it seem odd how this purportedly scientific issue has lined up so well with the political axis?
Gordon: I’m selling carbon credits. Paypal me. I have an idling car engine in the garage. I’ll turn it off for an hour for every dollar received.
This “purportedly scientific issue” has existed for some time. The latest IPCC report simply marks it as virtually irrefutable. That its publication date is bad timing for the Bush Administration is irrelevant. You’re sounding like one of those liberal conspiracy theorists.
Rob G, if you can’t summarize the book’s case, what’s the point of linking to it? The world has used credits very effectively in the past (eg, CFCs), why would they not work here?
I haven’t read the book Rob G is linking to, but I think Frank hit it on the head – CFC credits work because companies aren’t allowed to release CFCs unless they have credits, so if you buy CFC credits you’re stopping somebody else from producing CFCs – and if you buy them and don’t use them, you’re reducing the amount of CFC produced. But anybody can release carbon, so if you’re buying carbon credits, you aren’t actually stopping somebody else from producing carbon.
It wasn’t a book review, metaphorical, it was a blog post comment. There are no rules. But you want a summary, so here it is:
Carbon offsets don’t work because all they do is allow people to feel better about their lifestyles rather than promoting real change toward reversing the problem. There is no tax, no mandated penalty for emissions under this model. Wealthy polluters can simply buy away their sins, and the worst part is, most offset models have been proven to have little impact on the environment anyway, so the people selling these “credits” are getting rich, and it’s business as usual for the polluters. The immediate losers are the third world countries who end up footing the bill for the credits, and the long term losers are all of us, and the planet.
There are various types of carbon offset credits available. Some of them use “feel good” methods like planting trees, while others support projects such as solar/wind power in Africa for villages that do not currently have power and would otherwise have to be hooked up to the grid for their power. The latter type of projects do work because the carbon offsets are occuring because the power is generated from clean sources such as solar and wind and this mode of generation would not otherwise have taken place. This type of project is the best when it comes to carbon offsets because greenhouse gas emissions are being avoided altogether.
There have been various objective ratings of the carbon offset credits available out there. One that springs to mind was done by Tufts University.
Before you paint all carbon offset credits with the same brush, do the research and learn about them for yourself.
Hi Gordon,
I understand there are different carbon offset programs, and I’m saying — having DONE the research — that they all have their problems, and that carbon offsets in general are ALL feel-good bs. The url I cited in my initial comment leads to a link for a paper I was talking about, a very good one, about this stuff. It’s freely downloadable and I encourage you to read it.