David on Carbon Offsets
A guest post from David Turnbull
I’ve recently placed myself in a tough situation. Having moved to the East Coast, home is now quite far away as I become increasingly more concerned about my carbon footprint. While in Princeton, I take segmented showers to reduce my hot water use, I don’t eat meat, and my bike is my first option for transportation. But now that it’s summer I’m going to fly home to visit my friends and family and one could argue that this flight negates the efforts I make during the year. So I decided to look into carbon offsets, and while I didn’t put too much effort into it, I thought I’d share some information and ideas and maybe get some of yours in return.
The principle of a carbon offset is that, though you’re concerned about your own personal contribution to global climate change, you still might engage in some high-impact activities in the process of balancing quality of life with environmental concerns. So since you’re going to be emitting carbon dioxide by driving or flying or whatnot, you can pay some amount of money to support an initiative that reduces carbon dioxide emissions from some other process. For example, you might support a forestry project in which your money goes to reforest an area and ensure that it will remain unharvested in the future, thereby sequestering CO2 in the biomass of the forest. What you’re looking for in choosing a project is additionality, which means the project wouldn’t happen without the support of donors such as yourself. This requires some amount of thoughtfulness on your part and expertise that few people have. For example, I was looking at descriptions of many different projects that Carbon Fund supports, and I was surprised to see landfill gas projects on their list. I did a research project on the climate impact, efficiency, and costs for the various routes of biomass to energy. So I know that many landfills already collect the methane that is produced by the decomposition of biomass in the landfill, not because of any sense of altruism and not because environmentalists are paying them to do so but because it is profitable. So in that case there is no additionality because the project would have happened anyway. Therefore, I recommend trusting to independent third parties that have studied the types of offset projects as well as the organizations objectively. Here is one that I thought presented good information in a succinct manner: http://www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/carbonoffsets/TCI-offset-handout.htm , and their review of various organizations is here: http://www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/carbonoffsets/ratings.htm#yesbut . You can also choose projects that are implemented in the developing world and serve to enhance quality of life in local areas by providing, for example, renewable energy or even jobs.
So I went with Atmosfair because it was highly recommended by the website I just provided. Some of the names of their projects are “India: Solar Energy Substitutes Diesel Fuel,” “Thailand: Cleaning Sewage Water Protects Climate,” and “Nigeria: Efficient Fuel Wood Stoves.” Air travel has an extremely detrimental impact on the environment, worse than any ground transportation. The emissions from my roundtrip flight from Newark to SF was calculated to be over two tons of CO2 (and note that this is the amount attributed to each and every passenger on the plane). Since atmosfair is relatively expensive as far as carbon offsets go, I paid about $80 to offset my flight, but had I gone with carbonfund.org it would have cost just over $10. So why is one so much more expensive than the other? I believe the U.S. companies know that Americans aren’t willing to sacrifice much and so they’d rather that you donate $10 and feel like you’re offsetting your entire flight, even though you’re probably not. Both Atmosfair and Carbon Fund are nonprofits, so I just think Atmosfair is more realistic. I admit that I cringed when I saw how much more expensive Atmosfair was, but I’d rather not lie to myself, and even if I only had $10 to donate, it would be better to offset a portion of my flight using a highly reputable organization whose projects I like.
Also, I think it’s better to pay $80 because, well, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit. Paying $10 to ease your conscience about destroying the environment gives me some qualms. The first line of defense when it comes to environmentalism is to change your habits and minimize your own impact. If everybody decided to just maintain a destructive lifestyle and pay a couple hundred dollars every year to call themselves carbon neutral, there wouldn’t be enough offsets to go around and we wouldn’t be really solving the problem. So I wanted to put these ideas out there because I thought maybe some of you might be interested in carbon offsets for the same reasons I was, but understand that I don’t recommend them without some reservations.
SED said:
Jun 02, 08 at 4:11 amDavid,
“If everybody decided to just maintain a destructive lifestyle and pay a couple hundred dollars every year to call themselves carbon neutral, there wouldn’t be enough offsets to go around and we wouldn’t be really solving the problem.”
You seem to scold people in your tirade who hope to pay a price to offset their carbon emissions without major changes in their lifestyle. Is that not exactly what you are doing? You’re flying across the country and back and you’re paying $80 to offset that carbon use.
Isn’t that what everyone should/could do? If enough people paid a few hundred dollars each year to offset some (or even part) of their carbon footprint, then everything would be great! That sort of behavior is a goal. Environmentalists such as yourself grimace at the thought of purchasing of a ‘green future’–when in fact it is really the only truly viable option–and bemoan others who hope to ‘buy’ a clean conscience. It is completely short-sighted to think that all of the offsets can/would be used up. More money from more people means the availability of more offsets, period. Perhaps these offsets will not be simply reactionary (clean-up) but also proactive (tech-development, etc). Moreover, belittling several hundred dollars of contribution due to someone’s destructive lifestyle is antithetical to environmentalism and hypocritical at best.
You seem well-trenched in the idea that environmentalism is
“supposed to hurt a little bit,” when you tout “segmented showers” to reduce hot water usage. That seems flagrantly penitent and relatively futile. You live in a building with shared hot water heaters–you save mere gallons of hot water.
This painful and expensive environmentalism that you practice seems the only effective means by your standards.
Personally, I’d rather someone flew a few times a year, donated a hundred bucks to whatever fucking carbon sequestering NPO they wanted, and lived a life with (1) hot-showers or other penitence, (2) a clean conscience, and (3) no ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude about environmental impact.
David–you’re the problem. The only differences between you and the people you condemn are your cold showers and scolding tone. You make it seem like people’s contributions aren’t effective or worthwhile unless they are penitent and experience hardship. Keep thinking like this and you’ll see the ship of environmentalism sink to the bottom, captain and all. The first lines of defense when it comes to environmentalism is producing a means to ‘green’ that appeals to people who aren’t masochistic or feeling guilty.
sed
PS Don’t split infinitives.
ptscott said:
Jun 02, 08 at 5:43 amthanks for the comment, sed.
I think David’s claim that there is a limit to the amount of available offsets may be sound. The $10 (or $80 even) price to offset a seat of a round trip East coast-West coast flight certainly represents the cost of “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to offsets, and we’re talking REALLY low hanging at this point. If everybody was to pay the price of offsetting their flights, there’s no way we could find such cheap reactive opportunities. The price would have to go up by orders of magnitude, and we’re still only talking about one major source of emissions.
So probably we simply can’t plant enough trees or sequester enough carbon or whatever to offset the current level of emissions to what would be a sustainable level. But maybe when we consider “proactive” opportunities as you propose, it will be enough. I don’t know; I don’t think anybody does. Is it “short-sighted” to doubt that financial investments will be enough? I think it’s unclear what to expect, and in the face of uncertainty, I think we ought to cover our bases by reducing emissions in every way we can, and lifestyle change is one such opportunity.
“Moreover, belittling several hundred dollars of contribution due to someone’s destructive lifestyle is antithetical to environmentalism and hypocritical at best.” Really, “belittling”? I don’t think David is so hard, but …
I am sympathetic to the idea that there are sociopolitical reasons why “moralizing” environmental issues is counterproductive. Sounds like what those “Death of Environmentalism” guys had in mind (http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/13/doe-intro/). I’d really like to see these sorts of arguments put forth more rigorously somewhere because I, too, have felt substantial ennui when it comes to moral debates concerning the environment. But it’s a hard argument to make. For instance, I agree that increasing personal responsibility isn’t enough to save the world - we need substantially improved international cooperation in policy making and increased investment in R&D of sustainable technologies - but why are these goals incongruent?
David said:
Jun 02, 08 at 8:26 pmSed,
I’m sorry you feel that I have a “holier-than-thou” attitude when it comes to environmentalism. I truly do try hard not to, because I have certainly not been a very good environmentalist for most of my life and I remember how easy it is not to be conscious about environmental issues. I don’t think I’m as extreme as many environmentalists: those who demand that the only solution is for individuals in the western world to drastically change their lifestyles. I do small things like take segmented showers because they give me personal satisfaction, not because I think I’m making a huge impact. It’s also not at all a sacrifice for me so it’s hardly flagrantly penitent… But you’re wrong that one solution to climate change is that everybody purchase their own carbon neutrality.
Paul, on the other hand, is right on about that issue. The amount of headway that we can make into solving the problem by means of carbon offset-type projects is fairly minimal. And since western consumers largely set the standard that many people strive to reach with their lifestyles and standard of living, without changing our own lifestyles we won’t be sending the right message to those who emulate our ways of life or the industries and governments that heed our consumer and political choices. There are billions of people who resent the fact that we’re asking them to live minimally because we’ve lived so extravagantly, so how do you think they’ll feel when we say that we’re still not willing to change our ways? They also won’t be so happy when you congratulate them for finally reaching a level of prosperity where they can afford a car, but that if they want to drive it they’ll have to pay for carbon offsets also. We’ll also see if you can still afford your own carbon offsets at that point, when the market for renewables is so saturated that you’ll be subsidizing prototype fusion power plants since that will be the only solution substantial enough to provide for the unsustainable lifestyles of ten billion people.
Unfortunately, Sed, you’re the reason why Carbon Fund will only charge you $10 to offset a roundtrip flight from coast-to-coast. I trust, though, that there are enough people out there currently who are willing to make the right decisions here and there to signal our government that the time is right to take bold steps in the direction of achieving sustainability. I trust that a new administration will make the necessary changes that you’re not willing to make.
Jamie said:
Jun 30, 08 at 9:56 amMy very general and simplistic response to a detailed discussion, but it seems to be that single solution = bad, many solutions = good.