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| Wed, 19th Feb 2020 16:56:00 |
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What's the deal with carbon offsets? |
Over the summer of 2017, Swedish singer Staffan Lindberg started looking to do something about his carbon footprint. He pledged to stop flying, an easy way to slash his environmental impact by a large amount in a short period of time. Lindberg also coined the term “flygskam” to describe the feeling of climate-related guilt caused by traveling by air.
Since it was popularized by Greta Thunberg, an environmental activist from the same country credited with launching mass climate walkouts across the world, the term has become common parlance. Thunberg has challenged Swedish citizens to find alternatives to flying, and many are following through: An estimated one in four Swedes opted not to fly at all last year, while the number of passengers who flew through Swedish airports dropped by 4 percent in the same period.
But many are unwilling or unable to curb their flying habits. For those who fall into this camp, there are carbon offsets: a credit purchased to compensate for the volume of carbon that one seat on a plane releases into the atmosphere while in the air for a specific period of time. This money often goes to planting trees, developing clean energy to displace fossil fuels, or other activities that sequester or reduce carbon in the atmosphere.
Carbon offsets are complicated…
Seems simple enough, right? Well, in practice, purchasing carbon offsets isn’t quite the one-for-one exchange it’s made out to be.
For starters, calculating emissions-for-offset is tricky, and it’s easy for offset providers to get it wrong.
The offset industry is also riddled with logistical problems and is not well regulated. Following an offset payment from wallet to tree is hard, which means many consumers purchase offsets only for their money to seemingly disappear into the void.
Some offsets also go to environmental endeavors that are already taking place – such as forests that are already being preserved – rendering the purchase virtually useless.
Many environmentalists argue that purchasing offsets is simply not enough to curb climate change; the UN Environment Programme says offsets are not a “get-out-of-jail-free” card for flight shame, but must be coupled with other tangible forms of environmental action.
Read original full article
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