Eco-Guilt and Carbon Offsets

The idea of offsetting is fairly simple – if you add greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere (by driving your car, taking a trip in a plane…), you can effectively subtract them by purchasing ‘carbon offsets’ (credits for emission reductions achieved by projects elsewhere, such as wind farms, solar installations, energy efficiency projects or, in some cases, planting trees which doesn’t actually reduce emissions but may soak some up out of the atmosphere). By purchasing these credits, you finance ‘good’ projects and can apply the resultant reductions to your own emissions and reduce your net climate impact.

You’ll notice we don’t feature offsets on The Good Life because our first priority is to do everything possible to reduce our contribution to climate change, and that is what the site is all about. Why feel guilty and pay for your ‘eco-errors’ when you can avoid making them in the first place?

And, truth be told, it’s a bit of a Wild West in the carbon offset marketplace right now. There are lots of different credits floating around, and it can be hard to tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Some would say that offsets in and of themselves are a dangerous distraction which should be shunned. Author George Monbiot has famously compared them to the medieval system of selling indulgences, whereby individuals could atone for their sins (and limit their time in purgatory) by making a payment to the Church. The need to reduce greenhouse gase is so great, says Monbiot, that we shouldn’t be creating a ‘release valve’ that lets people think they can continue their ‘sins of emission’ as long as they pay a fine.

Even if you think offsetting makes sense, there’s no denying that there are some ‘bad’ credits floating around, e.g. cutting down rainforest to plant eucalyptus, then claiming the ‘credit’ for the new trees while ignoring the carbon lost through the original clearcut, or claiming credit for something that would have happened anyway (an old boiler that had to be replaced) so your money isn’t resulting in any additional reductions. And there are some truly ugly ones, where people paid to have trees planted but no one ever watered or cared for them so the seedlings mostly died.

There have also been questions raised as to whether local communities benefit from these international investments, or are the wealthy in the developed world depriving poor people in the developing world of access to resources they require for survival (e.g. foraging in the forest) so that those of us in the West can avoid having to deal with real changes to our over-consuming lifestyles.
 
If, however, you have done everything you can to reduce your emissions and would like to offset some or all of the remaining greenhouse gases, WWF has worked with others to establish a Gold Standard for offsets that provides some quality control with respect to environmental and social benefits from the investments. 

The Gold Standard adds three special screens to provide this quality control by asking:

1.    Does the project use renewable energy or energy efficiency technologies (so that the focus is on reducing emissions)?
2.    Does the project go above and beyond a “business as usual” scenario (so you’re not paying for something that would have happened anyway)?
3.    Does the project promote sustainable development (is the local community involved and benefitting from the project)?

Companies that sell Gold Standard offsets include Planetair, Less, My Climate, Sustainable Travel International, Climate Friendly, and Atmosfair.

by Keith Stewart