The whole idea of carbon offsets strikes me as hokus-pokus. There may possibly be some logic to the "one earth" conviction behind it, in that all emissions of carbon dioxide into the air will effect everyone, everywhere on the planet. But the idea that an emitter can pay money to 'offset' emissions just seems to me like the tooth fairy in energy industry disguise.

The theory is that if you send out thousands of tons of the stuff but pay some specifically designated per-ton amount of money to a company whose mission is to do wonderful things to the earth's atmosphere, then the evilness of your emissions will be, if not exactly neutralized, then at least somewhat compensated for. Almost sounds plausible, right? But at the very beginning there seem to me to be two fundamental probelms: (a) how can you realistically and accurately measure carbon dioxide tonnage, (b) how can you realistically and accurately assess exchange rates for carbon dioxide and efforts to reduce CO2 emissions or produce wind power or whatever? Not to mention (c) how do you assure accountability of companies engaging in so-called offsetting and (d) how do you measure the efficacy of the so-called offsetting? None of this happened overnight and the atmosphere isn't just three or four cubic feet big, so it's not as if you can look in a can of air and see that it's ever so much cleaner once it's been wind-powered clean or whatever. Academy Awards presenters this year were given carbon offset credits, by the way, so they could fly gas-guzzling-and-CO2-emitting jets or produce movies and yet sending conscience-assuaging-CO2-offsetting funds to small towns in Africa. It's appallingly first-vs-fourth world, isn't it?

You could, of course, simply hook-line-and-sinker believe a company called NativeEnergy, one of the Gore-approved (and invested in, hmmm....) companies. They sell offsets at $12 per ton and claim they'll use offset income to generate wind-powered electricity in Alaska for 52 Alaskan villages (not 53 or 51 villages, you understand; 52; too darn bad about any others). If, like me, the whole idea of carbon offsets sounds really sketchy to you, read Steven Milloy's article, Carbon Offsets : Buyer Beware. Among other things he mentions is that Congress has begun investigating the carbon offset industry. Which seems astonishes me since I assume this Congress is jam-packed with offset believers. And even if the investigation is merely pro forma, some inconvenient (heh) facts are bound to come out. You don't suppose the carbon offset industry is so utterly ridiculous that even Congress realized it had to be publicly and officially examined before it got completely out of hand?

Labels: economics, huh?, politics, reflections