On the surface, it seems like purchasing carbon offsets is the solution made for me. Air Canada even lets me purchase them right online with my ticket.
The trouble is, it looks like carbon offsets are a crock. The goal of the offset is to make it as if my polluting trip never happened. So my trip dumps X tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, to make it like it never happened, I either have to remove X (direct offset), or somehow get someone else who would otherwise release X tonnes to not do so (indirect offset).
The direct offset seems like the best bet, but there are practically no ways of removing substantial quantities of CO2 from the carbon cycle. Note that I did not say "atmosphere", I said "carbon cycle". The global warming problem is that we've been digging carbon out of the ground and adding it to the biosphere, which cycles carbon from air to ocean to plants and people via the carbon cycle. Planting trees, the most popular direct offset, which removes carbon from the atmosphere, still retains the carbon in the biosphere... it is not back underground, it is just in a tree. When the tree dies in a couple hundred years, back into the atmosphere the carbon will go. Perhaps someone will start a carbon offset program that involves clear cutting mature forests and sinking them into the deep ocean.
The indirect offsets suffer from the fact that while everyone wants a carbon market, no one has built one that actually limits carbon output yet. If I knew a credit I bought on a market was tied to a verifiable, and permanently capped, amount of carbon, I could offset by buying a credit, then flushing it down the toilet.
Pollution markets tend to be tied to big fixed industries with measurable outputs. A verifiable carbon market would be great for individuals but tough on the big polluters, because individuals could suck credits out of the system, and would probably do so even faster than the planned cap reductions. If they did, then inevitably politics would result as the big industries cried foul, the planned caps would be relaxed, and the purchased "offsets" would suddenly lose much of their offsetting value.
So, direct offsets are basically impossible, because no one is pumping carbon back into the crust, and indirect offsets are very subject to manipulation and impotence. For now I'm left with most of my carbon footprint in jet fuel.
9 comments:
Just curious: what you think about offsets that subsidize development of wind or solar power plants? The first offset function i saw functioned that way, and it seemed more of the way one might imagine the US Federal taxes to be managed -- cut subsidies, benefits, support to oil, coal, etc and subsidize alternatives.
The trouble with "promote alternatives" offsets (another form of indirect offset) is that how much they reduce carbon emissions is highly debateable. Building a nuclear plant does not stop me from building a coal plant, it just makes the eventual price I get for my coal-fired electricity slightly lower. You will have to build a whole lot of nukes and windmills before you can drive coal off the market on the basis of alternative fuel generation alone. Remember, world energy demand is not fixed, it is constantly expanding, and not in the most efficient ways possible. Build a million nukes and windmills and drive electricity to 10% of its current price, and what is more likely — coal goes out of business, or we all run our air conditioners 24/7 with the windows open?
There's a much easier solution to the problem: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Wulffmorgenthaler/~3/125913079/strip.aspx
I'm not sure what kind of apocalyptic future scenario you have in mind, but when those trees die in 200 years, they shouldn't immediately be released into the atmosphere - the carbon would remain in the wood.
Unless of course the terminator machines are burning the trees as fuel.
Not apocalyptic, Ben, just business as usual. In British Columbia, the trees frequently burn in forest fires. Or, they fall to the forest floor and rot, and give off carbon as the bacteria eat them. Or they are harvested and turned into paper, which has its own lifecycle, ending perhaps in a landfill, where they in turn rot or turn into methane. Some of it may actually stay fixed in tree matter for a thousand, or two thousand years, but it's part of the biosphere's carbon cycle now, it's not locked up 2km below ground anymore. The carbon in the wood in my 100 year old house has had a good run of being fixed, but who knows what the next 100 years may bring. Compared to the security of, say, unmined coal, carbon in the biosphere is dicey stuff.
Not as dicey as the terminator machines though. Those give me the willies.
The trouble is, it looks like carbon offsets are a crock. The goal of the offset is to make it as if my polluting trip never happened.
Yes, it's like cheat offsetting :)
Isn't doing something better than doing nothing? I'm wanting to get a community project going on getting people to plant their own trees, as many or few as they like, on deforested land that can also end up being multi-use with walking tracks,mountain bike tracks, picnic areas etc but with no finacial outlay from council or government.
Free Carbon Offsets:
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com
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