Worldchanging and Carbon Offsets
May 11th, 2008 by AndrewAs someone who has historically been critical of carbon offsetting in order to absolve Western guilt, I was getting ready to write a fairly scathing post about Worldchanging’s “carbon clean slate” offsets. But then I started reading through some of the comments section, and there’s actually a pretty good discussion there about the validity of offsetting. As far as Alex Steffen (of Worldchanging) is concerned:
“…as an average American with currently used systems and currently available technologies, you simply cannot save enough energy by yourself to have no carbon impact. Even if you underwent radical lifestyle reductions (reductions that almost no one is willing to undergo), your share of the public impact (roads, bridges, airports, military, NASA, the health department, the Postal Service, etc.) is larger than a one-planet carbon footprint. That impact is made in your name, with your tax dollars, for your benefit, but you can’t change it with what you buy or what you forego. You can, however, offset it and work to change it.
That is not the same thing as trying to shop your way to sustainability.
It’s worth [being] clear-headed about that, I think.”
While I can consistently agree with that side of things, it’s hard not to be cynical about offsetting; but if done properly, it’s important to recognize that it is a positive step. If it weren’t framed in business terms (money for carbon), anyone would laud planting trees or buying more renewable electricity. While in the case of offsets it just means treading water in terms of net footprint, offsets of this scale represent a pretty huge chunk of “negative” carbon, since very few people really enter past impact into their reckoning. The notion of rich people paying off their sins is sort of distasteful, but realistically, there are a far worse uses for their cash.
I can only wish that this discussion gets as heated…
May 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I don’t normally advocate reading discussion threads, but I made it through this entire one and it is quite interesting…
Anyway, while I think I can support carbon offsetting (I wasn’t aware of the shift in these offsets away from planting trees -> investing in green technologies… this is good to see), I have to take issue with the basic rationale for the Carbon Clean Slate certificates. Worldchanging claims:
“Our Carbon Clean Slate gifts lift that guilt by offsetting their childhoods. They can go forward in life knowing that their emissions have been balanced by your gift, and they are free to make their own way in the world, unhampered by the past… Your grad gets to head out into the world with the moral weight of their personal choices lifted from their shoulders…”
SERIOUSLY? While I certainly want to do my part to encourage a more sustainable world, I feel not a single ounce of “moral weight” from my childhood holding me back. Fuck off. I will never feel guilty for having parents who raised me in the best way they knew how, even if I can look back and see the damage this caused. I don’t feel guilty for slaughtering native North Americans or for the slave trade, even though I surely benefited from both and am fully supportive of modern acts of restitution and justice. I know wrongs were committed, and I know that because I directly benefit from them that I should pay to try to fix them (when the government gives them cash for example), but to say that I should feel guilty is crazy. In the same way, I would love to see all those thousands of dollars go to TerraPass, but when they try to get donations using the shame of the past instead of the hope of the future, it pisses me off immensely. Boo.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Totally [guilt] free carbon offsets:
http://www.freecarbonoffsets.com