Carbon Offsetting - Buying Your Way into Heaven?

One of the buzz words that seems to have become more prevalent in the past few months is "carbon offsetting". Like all good buzz words, it is bantered around as if everyone knows what it means, and furthermore, at least in this case, it is presented as a good idea, and everyone should be doing it.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the majority of people really have little understanding about what carbon offsetting means, and more importantly, if it is something they should be doing. If you happen to fall into this category, here is a brief overview and explanation about carbon offsetting.

Basically, carbon offsetting is a donation that you make to support the development of renewable energy sources. The size of your donation is calculated by the amount of CO2 your action releases into the atmosphere and how much it will cost to generate an equivalent amount of green energy.

For example, according to TerraPass a return trip from Toronto to Vancouver emits 1,620 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. By buying a TerraPass for $9.95 you can 'offset' 2,500 lbs of CO2, which more then covers your emissions. The $9.95 is then invested in renewable energy projects and technology. It is projected that this investment will produce the equivalent amount of green [not CO2 emitting] energy that it took to travel from Vancouver and back. As a result, your trip was 'carbon neutral'.

While I am all for supporting renewable energy, I am not a huge fan of carbon offsetting. The problem that I see with it is that it allows you to just pay for your environmental sins, rather then avoiding the sin altogether! In some ways, carbon offsetting seems to allow you to pollute as much as your pocket book can afford. Theoretically, by simpling adding the financial cost of carbon offsetting I could argue that a Hummer is a green vehicle!

The only redeeming factor about carbon offsetting is that at least it is a step. It is also a step that is relatively easy for large corporations to take. I guess, something is better then nothing.

So what is a person to do? In my opinion, at the very least off set your carbon by either making financial contributions, but even better, reduce the amount of energy you use in the first place! For example, make your home as energy efficient as possible; take mass transit; walk and bike more; purchase gas efficient cars.

To find out more about carbon offsetting, as well as tools such as carbon calculators I highly recommend the Carbon Neutral page from the David Suzuki Foundation.