| As global warming finally seeps into the public | | | | carte blanche to continue to spill our own individual |
| consciousness, carbon offsets are fast becoming | | | | carbon loads into the atmosphere, the |
| the next hot new thing (no pun intended). People | | | | atmosphere is still going to contain that carbon. |
| love them because they let you buy your way | | | | Tree-planting offsets may absorb some of that |
| out of your carbon impacts. Write a check and | | | | carbon eventually (those trees will take time to |
| erase your guilt. And I've always been a little | | | | mature to full carbon absorption capacity ). |
| troubled by this and by the whole idea of carbon | | | | Building renewable energy generation may help, |
| offsets themselves. | | | | but with overall energy demand continually rising, |
| For one thing, you can't always trust all the offset | | | | they may not offset the impacts of traditional |
| providers that are suddenly popping up all over | | | | energy supplies so much as they merely |
| the place. Some are likely to be scams. Others | | | | supplement those supplies with cleaner sources of |
| offer no real measurements of the carbon they | | | | power. |
| prevent. Others are just taking your money for | | | | I guess I hope we come to see carbon offsets |
| projects that would have happened anyway. | | | | as a stop-gap solution and not as a permanent |
| There need to be some standards on both sides | | | | answer that licenses us to keep on keeping on |
| of the equation, i.e. how much carbon the | | | | albeit without any guilt or responsibility for our |
| consumer actually needs to offset for each | | | | own behaviors. It really feels to me like they're a |
| activity they engage in and how much carbon | | | | temporary strategy to reduce some of our |
| each provided offset actually offsets. Apparently, | | | | impacts and help finance a bigger, more impactful |
| Britain is going to create and apply some of these | | | | renewable energy infrastructure, a voluntary |
| standards soon. We probably need something like | | | | carbon tax of sorts, rather than a solution. The |
| that to happen in the U.S. | | | | only real answer to climate change that I see is |
| A lot of questions remain about carbon offsets | | | | to make changes in how we use energy so that |
| but meanwhile the world seems to be rushing to | | | | we use less of it at all times, regardless of |
| embrace them. I worry that people will think they | | | | whether or not we're offsetting, and to develop |
| can use offsets to simply buy their way out of | | | | and widely disseminate those technologies that |
| the problem rather than actually solve it. You | | | | permit us to make these changes without the |
| know, we can purchase all the carbon offsets in | | | | kinds of sacrifices that turn people off by recalling |
| the world, but if in doing so we think that gives us | | | | a Paleolithic lifestyle. |