Carbon Offsets: Will the Martin Luther of Climate Change Please Stand Up?

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by Ross in Climate Change, Oceania, South America

The Catholic practice of selling indulgences – exchanging absolution from minor sins for a price which the Church happily pocketed – was one of the chief motivating factors for German priest Martin Luther to nail his 95 questions to the door of Wittenburg university cathedral in 1517: a primary catalyst of the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism.

Nearly 500 years later, the climate change equivalent of indulgences have taken another step forward, with a new company offering to automatically absolve your computer of its sins against the environment – for a price.

Australian software company Little Green Genie calculates the amount of power used by your computer from the length of time it has been operating, then automatically purchases sufficient carbon offset credits from Australian offset provider Climate Friendly to compensate for the carbon dioxide released by providing the power for the computer to run.

No stress, no hassle, no thought. Guilt-free computing without harming the environment, right?

Maybe not.

Carbon offsetting originally started as a way of compensating for carbon-polluting actions by extracting an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by another means. Tree-planting schemes were the poster-children of the carbon offset world – take an aeroplane flight on holiday, then compensate for it by getting someone in South America to plant a few extra trees to suck the carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere.

This kind of action of course comes with a few strings attached. The calculations often require the trees have to remain alive for their full (hundreds of years) life-cycle: someone coming along in 50 years time to clear away a bit more forest for grazing land voids the earlier environmental intentions.

Worse than that, though: many offset schemes are now revolving around a lack of negative action rather than taking positive action. The most high-profile case is the Bolivian government’s offer to sell carbon offsets for forgoing development of a new oil-field under one of its national parks. No concept of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere here. Just a case of asking for money to not release more carbon instead.

Bolivia’s offer seemed to fall on deaf ears in the carbon offset markets – the scale and profile of the scheme was obviously deemed a step too far. Now, however, Bolivia is simply resorting to international blackmail, demanding compensation for not extracting the oil in the name of climate change. They may well be taken up on their offer: with the deadline for the end of the Kyoto protocol looming, many nations who care enough about their environmental credentials but who have failed to take sufficient action over the last 20 years to limit emissions are simply offsetting their emissions instead.

The principle problem of offsetting is that it enables individuals, companies and countries the ability to maintain a status quo – to continue to pollute and pay for someone else to clean it up. However, with the scientific consensus agreeing that we as a planet are already too far down the line to do anything but take immediate and drastic action, the use of carbon offsets must be scaled back as an antidote to inaction.

Only by taking strong positive steps to reduce carbon footprints through energy efficiency, greater renewable energy use and more efficient use of raw materials can individuals, companies and countries take the steps necessary for avoiding catastrophic damage to the global environment.

Got any stories about dodgy carbon offsets? Do you use them to cover your own emissions? Tell us your stories about carbon offsets in the comments below!

Image of statue of Martin Luther by John Bailey @ Flickr