Those poor offsetters – haven’t they had a bum rap recently? Every man and his dog has waded in to condemn offsetting as our next big crime against nature. Is it justified? Almost certainly not. Sure, there are a cynical minority who will seek to maximise their profits unscrupulously with unethical or counterproductive Carbon Offsetting schemes – a few rotten apples do not a barrel make. However, most of the criticism is aimed at the philosophical problem that people should be cutting-back/powering-down and not using offsetting as an excuse for ‘business as normal’ (BAN).
The problem with all this is that the vast majority of people who offset are the kind of conscientious people who are already bolting on the solar panels and changing their energy suppliers to green energy. Those who don’t give a damn will not have voluntarily spent money on tree planting anyway. So who are these minority of people who are trying to buy themselves out of carbon debt? Well, politicians, big business, marketing folk - the usual suspects mostly. However, if you read some of the anti-offsetting polemic (at such places as www.planestupid.com) you would think that any person thinking of offsetting some aspect of their lives (that they haven’t been able to forego) are guilty of poking the eyes out of Pandas. Some of the dogma now bandied around defies all rational thinking. The Ecologist Magazine now actively discourages its readers from Offsetting and now wants them to invest their money in buying tracts of mature rain forest. HELLO! Mature trees absorb little CO2. What are you thinking? The crazy loons publicised an interesting but irrelevant report that showed that blowing more CO2 over a tree didn't mean it was all absorbed. This, they claimed, showed that tree planting "didn't work". HELLO! CRAZY PEOPLE!! Growing trees absorb CO2. The more CO2 we produce the more trees you have to plant. Unbelievable. They still teach photosynthesis in schools don't they or am I going nuts?
This tars everyone with the same brush. For every high-flyer, who takes pride in their five foreign holidays a year, there is some poor sucker who has to fly for Business or to visit sick relatives. These people may not have a choice in the short term. They may therefore choose to invest some ethical capital in a scheme that counter-acts the harm they are doing. It doesn’t mean that they think that makes it alright. It just recognises that they are on a different part of the path and are working on the next stage.
The big issues with offset-bashing is that it will kill this form of ethical investment just when it needs a massive injection of capital. Once the seeds of chaos and confusion are sown people will do without ethical investments. It will put them off. Let’s face it, where is the damage? Do we starve reforestation projects of millions of pounds of investment because of some childish fears that a few trees might burn down? No, this is terribly dangerous. People should invest now. The concept of “offsetting” may be just the motivation some people need. Once you remove that you remove baby with the bathwater. That is crazy. Just because people make the right decisions for the wrong reasons doesn’t make it wrong. This kind of 'holier than thou' politics just turns people off.
So, what do we do? Certainly we need a major rebranding exercise. If the green-thought-police are so offended by the very word “offset” then let us call it something else. Instead of “offset” let us call it “adjustment”. Henceforth all such schemes are generically “Carbon Debt Negation” schemes. Not “Target Zero” or “Carbon Neutral” but “Ethical Carbon Investments”. These can be broken down into “Carbon Sink Investments” and “Carbon Displacement Initiatives”. These must be governed by strict rules: they must be a net drain of atmospheric CO2. ‘Displacing’ your future carbon growth just means you stand still. OK, better than nothing. This is certainly a lot better then the fraudulent use of
What about tree planting? This is a carbon sink. And we need as much of this as possible. It must be in trust, i.e., not temporary to be sold off for logging at some future date. If it burns down then it will need to be insured to make sure it is replanted. A small proportion of all tree stock burns down every year just like a small number of people die in car accidents. However, we don’t react by staying in bed for the rest of our lives. We offset the risk by driving safely and insuring your car.
What about research that says that trees give off carbon? Science can give us information about the best trees to plant and how best to plant them and where to plant them. However, millions of years of trees ended up as coal and there is an awful lot of coal in the ground. So please don’t kid yourselves that trees are not a carbon sink. Lots of them, over a long enough time, in the right place, certainly are. But the more we know the better if we are to make trees an effective carbon sink.
What of the criticism that Trees take 100 hundred years to absorb their Carbon? Yes, this is self-evident. This is a lifetime choice and the golden rule is that you choose any investment for its long term returns. This argument revolves around the concept of keeping Fossil Fuels in the ground NOW to maximise the anti-global-warming effects. A great concept but change will only happen slowly. Too slowly for some. If we burn these fuels now but absorb the CO2 over the next 100 years this is like going into debt on your credit card. This is a Carbon Debt. Like monetary debt this debt will hurt you – you accrue interest. Unlike monetary debt this CO2 Debt can really hurt you. Like, you know, kill you. Hence, why risk it?
No one is making these Carbon Displacement Investment choices in order to make money. These are non monetary investment choices. You are investing in the lives of your children and their children. It is the same as saving up for their schooling. You don’t expect to get the money back. It is all done from altruism. So, please, lets hear it for Carbon Displacement! But let us not forget that the best place for carbon is to leave it in the ground.
Carbon Neutral is dead. Long live CarbonResponsible. CarbonLite! CarbonConscious. CarbonWise. CarbonFutures. CarbonWisdom. CarbonContraction. Call it what you like. But don’t stop investing. It is not a licence to fly or pollute. It is a licence to live. Do not confuse your life with how much you can consume of travel. This is a disease of the wealthy industrialised North and West. We identify ourselves by what we use up and not what we have left for our children.