Carbon Offsets: Boon or Boondoggle?

by Chuck Hall

One of the proposed ‘solutions’ to global warming is the sale of carbon offsets. The basic idea behind carbon offsets is that if you have a lifestyle that produces a lot of carbon emissions, and you don’t want to change that lifestyle, in theory you can instead buy carbon offsets to make yourself ‘carbon neutral.’
The money paid to buy carbon offsets goes to fund projects that reduce or eliminate greenhouse gases. Your carbon-offset money might go to a reforestation project, or towards increasing the energy efficiency of a public building, or to help a public utility purchase greener equipment to produce greener energy.
Right now, carbon offsets are voluntary. You can purchase an offset equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide for about $4. This means that the average family can become carbon-neutral for around $100, but does this program effectively reduce greenhouse gases?
I suppose that it’s a good thing that carbon offset money is used to fund environmental projects, but my concern is that the message conveyed by the carbon offset program is that you can buy enough carbon offsets to become ‘carbon neutral,’ then go about business as usual. In effect, you’ve excused your carbon emissions by passing the buck on down the line, rather than by making any major lifestyle changes to address the problem firsthand.
I believe that if we are to survive on this planet, sweeping change has to be made at a grassroots level. We have to rebuild our lifestyles from the ground up, a step at a time. The carbon-offset program feels a little too much like a ‘band-aid’ solution. Voluntary offsets seem to be a way to overindulge and not feel guilty about it…sort of like the practice of the Church selling ‘indulgences’ in the Middle Ages. And we know how well that turned out.
Another problem with carbon offsets is that since this is a new, emerging market, there is little or no regulation. Providers may not always do what they say they do, and it’s difficult if not impossible to evaluate whether they’re keeping their promises. There have been a few moves towards establishing a certification process for carbon offsets, but so far not much progress has been made.
I suppose that carbon offset programs are a good thing in that they have raised awareness of the problems of greenhouse gas emissions, but at best such programs are only temporary solutions until industries worldwide learn to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions through improved technology and wiser, more sustainable business practices.