Offsetting Environmental Ignorance

Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, published an enlightening piece called Indulging In Carbon on TomPaine.com last week. His basic message: while buying carbon offsets is a great way to supplement clean energy for dirty energy, the act does nothing to reduce our wasteful ways. I agree wholeheartedly. In his article, O’Donnell quotes The Netherlands-based Carbon Trade Watch, which warned in a recent report that:

From flights, to four-wheel drives, to [gasoline], carbon offsets provide a false legitimacy to some of the most inherently unsustainable products and services on the market. What’s more, the costs of this purchasable legitimacy are often largely shunted onto the consumer, who effectively ends up paying for the greenwash. These companies also benefit because offset schemes place more of the focus on the consumers’ responsibility for climate change—at the expense of examining the larger, systemic changes that we need to bring about in our industries and economies.

Ouch. Carbon Trade Watch’s conclusions are undoubtedly true. But, I feel the “green” movement is still in a nascent stage, and that the people who by carbon offsets are also the same people who practice more sustainable lifestyles. Maybe I’m wrong, or haven’t been exposed to the relative masses of people buying carbon offsets as “indulgences” as O’Donnell suggests. But in the long term, O’Donnell is correct. He says, “At the very least, we ought to recognize that consumer-based carbon offsets aren’t going to be enough to address the very real problem of global warming. After all, the U.S. emits more than 7 billion tons of greenhouse gases each year—and we need to reduce those emissions, not just offset increases.”

The public can’t be convinced by those leading the movement to reduce our harmful ways that carbon offsets are the solution to climate change. Unfortunately the “we” who will recognize this and the “we” who need to reduce emissions are not one in the same.  What a shame it will be if the education process teaches another wrong instead of raising awareness of the fundamental source of climate change.