ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A CARBON OFFSET

Now that the turkey has been eaten, everyone’s thoughts are turning to Christmas shopping, right? Here’s an easy gift, available only online, and you will be oh so green for giving it.

Pop quiz: What is “retiring carbon credits” and how does doing so earn offsets? See “Why” below for the interesting answer.

Undoing Your Daily Damage to the Earth, For a Price
Eileen Zimmerman, November 11, 2007 (NY Times)

WHO
Online carbon offset retailers like TerraPass, Carbonfund.org, NativeEnergy and e-BlueHorizons; research firms New Carbon Finance and Ecosystem Marketplace; certifiers/verifiers Green-e, SES Inc. , First Environment and Environmental Defense

WHAT
Carbon offsetting is a way for the consumer who cannot reduce his or her carbon footprint any further to do something about it instead of nothing about it. There are questions about and inconsistencies in the process.

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WHEN
- Offsets sold grew 42% from 2005 to 2006.
- TerraPass: 80,000 offsets sold to this point in 2007, 20,000 to this point in 2006
- The CarbonNeutral Company’s website sales of air flight offsets has increased 10-fold in the last 18 months.

WHERE
Most of the offset business is done online.

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WHY
- All greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be offset, ton-for-ton, as carbon-equivalents. Online calculators can determine a buyer’s emissions or the buyer can just offset the national average, about 20 tons/year/person.
- Offset price: $2.50/ton to $20/ton.
- The money is to remove GHGs (funding reforestation), avoid production (funding wind and solar installations) or destroy them before they are released (methane capture).
- ANSWER TO THE POP QUIZ: Retiring of carbon credits - Businesses and industries purchase credits in mandatory markets like the EU ETS or voluntary markets like the Chicago Climate Exchange. The credits are sold by businesses/industries who do business with fewer emissions than they are allotted. A credit allows the purchasing business/industry one ton of carbon-equivalent emissions above its allotment. If a consumer buys a credit and retires it, it can’t be used to pollute. If all credits were retired, no business'industry could exceed its allotment without paying a significant fine (which would go toward New Energy).
- Critics complain that consumers are trying to buy their way out of excessive, destructive consumption patterns.
- Another flaw is the absence standards, as reflected by the wide range of prices. And some offsets are of questionable value, possibly funding efforts that would have been undertaken without the money from the offset.

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QUOTES
- Consumer Patti Saraniero: “I’m glad we do it, but I’m also a little ambivalent about it…I’m not so keen about someone making a buck off of global warming, but our options are limited at the moment. I want to drive a hybrid, but can’t afford one big enough for all of us. So I use offsets.”
- Erik Blachford, CEO, TerraPass: “[Climate change is an] all-hands-on-deck crisis; we need the private sector’s resources and business experience to effectively engage consumers on the scale necessary to address the problem.”
- Kevin Smith, researcher, Carbon Trade Watch/author, “The Carbon Neutral Myth”: “[Offsets] take people’s impulse to do something about climate change and commodify it…The message is, ‘Give us your money and we’ll deal with the problem,’ when real responses to climate change involve people being active in their communities, using political pressure and making changes themselves…”
- Eric Carlson, executive director, Carbonfund.org: “The easy way out is to do nothing…Carbon offsets are a self-imposed tax, which gives you the financial incentive to reduce your emissions as much as economically feasible.”