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Buying Carbon Credits
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Posted by skagit_goat_man_ WA (My Page) on Sun, May 13, 07 at 8:12
| The Inconvenient Truth thread brought this to mind. A couple of months back there were news reports on the carbon footprint of one of Al Gore's homes. I believe it was over 8x that of the average American home. But the report "absolved" him because he purchased carbon credits that offset his use.
OK, move away from Gore specifically and look at individuals purchasing carbon credits. Does it really accomplish anything beyond a transfer of money and allowing a sow's ear to present itself as a silk purse? During the American Civil War when a man was drafted into the Union army he could pay someone else to take his place. Did that make him a patriotic soldier, no, he just used money to avoid the sacrifice. So when a "carbon pig" pays someone for having a small carbon footprint does that make him/her an active environmentalist or just someone who uses money to avoid making the hard choices in their own lives?
At it's simplest it seems that the person receiving the payment wasn't going to use any more carbon and the one purchasing the credit isn't going to use any less. So what's accomplished? I'll admit right now that maybe I'm dense and just missing the point. Tom |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| g'day tom, yeh i thought it was good this gore bloke making money from a doco' telling us how to be green when he uses so much resource. and buying carbon credits is "rabbit out of the hat" stuff realy, all buying credits will do is make more money for someone bigger along the way and it will do exactly nought to fix the carbon problem in the atmosphere. to fix that problem needs real measures, not "feel good measures". at the end of the day the "guy" runs and inefficient and wastefull home, that's the reality of it. len |
Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| I myself have a huge problem with the whole carbon trading scheme. It does absolutely nothing to limit the amount of carbon that goes into the air. The amount we already put in the air is bad....all carbon credits do is allow a polluter to keep on polluting. The idea behind it is that eventually carbon credits will become so expensive that it will be cheaper to be environmentally friendly. My fear is that by the time that happens it will already be too late. AS for the Kyoto protocol which set the whole thing up...how can it be effective when the United States and Australia are not even a part of it? Now some american compnaies and cities have taken the incentive to join things like the Global Compact but on a whole if societies mentality does not change all we are doing is prolonging the inevitable. The earth can not sustain what we are doing to it. Just here is Florida it shows how badly we are hurting. Florida is under major drought watch...and the amount of construction and people moving here are only helping to exasperate the problem...One lake down here is over 14 feet below where it is suppossed to be..the everglades are drying up!!!! Its horrible....Sorry went on a rant...will end now...you touched a nerve...I hate hypocrisy...I believe in Gores message I just wished he did as well.. |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| It was disturbing to discover just how inefficient the Gore household is. I hope this revelation will prompt him to install some solar panels, replace some lightbulbs - anything. I thought they way the carbon credits worked, is that you calculate how much your car or house emits in carbon output, then purchase credits which enable alternative energy sources to continue operating. (solar, wind, etc.) I thought it kind of subsidized alternative energy. Am I just a babe in the woods on this subject? Because I just bought a TerraPass and was feeling pretty goodabout myself. (that, and the fact that my car gets 32 miles/gallon combined city and highway, and nearly 40 on the open road) |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| probably a babe in the woods? the promoters want that sort of thinking, but in real terms as it will be seen in say 50 years time when all that has happened is a lot of money has been swallowed up in profit coffers with little or no change to the problem at hand. this is just another way of making the lowest common denominator pay for a problem we realy had not that much say in causing, they after all did not give us alternative options that were affordable. len |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| So, just another gimmick to make us feel better about ourselves, eh? Yeah, I'm beginning to see that. Oh well, I'll keep doing my bit - I can't control what everyone else does. I wish the powers that be had listened to Thomas Edison at the turn of the 20th Century, when he advocated personal wind turbines to generate electricity. But then, I guess there wouldn't have been enough profit in it! |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| the system may be evolving to be as you sceptics say, but initially the intention was that someone who is currently generating more co2 than average would financially support areas/countries/businesses that were generating less than average, and particularly those that were using/developing "greener" alternatives or who needed to [like China] .... and I'm sure there are few Americans who will willingly help China develop clean energy alternatives unless there's personal profit for them in it I don't think any of us average individuals have any real insights into how the carbon credit system is working, but one place the money goes is to tree planting, and agricultural enterprises that contribute to carbon sequestration, like no-till organic farming - more folks should choose to recognize the true hidden costs of their energy use the way Gore has as one of the 'wealthy', Gore happens to own a property and residence that is representative of the western profiligacy that has allowed the problem to get where it is, and from all I've heard he has been upgrading it .... I don't understand the thinking that a person who invests a lot in trying to wake folks to the problem should shut up if he isn't a saint .... regardless of Gore's personal situation I think he's done us all a service producing that film Bill |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| Gore's not the focal point in my thinking. It's the idea that I can keep polluting as long as I buy these credits from someone who isn't polluting as much as they could. Bill, I've seen a lot of no till ag and it seems to be based on using a herbicide for crop/weed residue burn down. I don't know if that qualifies as organic. But it is a good system for many reasons. Tom |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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| the only way in real time to stop pollution is to stop polluting, and it will be seen over the decades that buying credits is not going to work as there is way of controlling what happens to that money after it has been paid so someone can 'feel good'. and as for the documentry this is typical of someone who runs & supports very in-efficient homes making money out of telling others what to do, a bit of setting by example might be better put. as for china they already have around 300 old tech' pollution belching power stations and they are planning on doubling that, as over here we develop more coal mines (pollution causers in their own right) to supply them for their power stations. all while the pressure is being put on our communities to do away with our few more modern coal fired stations and settle for the just as unsafe nu0clear units, all in a big picture where our contribution to the issue is equivelent to around 2% of the bigger world issue. just doesn't make sense any of it. a bit of perspective goes a long way. len |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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I agree with most everyone here. Buying carbon credits is idiotic. Just because I get to buy a credit doesn't make it right that I am getting a huge gas guzzling car, when i don't need it.
How can these people be good "environmental" role models when they take the easy, rich way out? What a joke!
Same deal with the company that plants trees for you depending on how much you pollute. Oh, non efficient furnace? Give us 200 bucks and we will plant 10 trees to make up the difference.
It just boggles my mind that people think that they are "green" when they do this. Green isn't about passing the buck it is making changes and EVERYONE has to make the change to make a difference. Those people who call themselves green because they buy carbon credits or have some company plant trees for them are just the opposite of what they think they are! How will they ever encourage people to change their ways when they can't even accomplish that? |
RE: Buying Carbon Credits
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- Posted by bry84 England (My Page) on
Fri, Jun 8, 07 at 17:08
| I don't think carbon credits are able to solve the problem with pollution. The way we use energy has some large obvious failings, things that we do need to consider and change, but carbon credits are about resolving these problems without actually changing anything about them directly. At the most extreme it's like suggesting a good alternative to changing wasteful light bulbs for low energy ones is planting a load of trees. I think it's all a big illusion, that we can buy our way out of pollution, and that the developed world doesn't really need to change its bad habits. Just keep pumping out pollution because it's easy and makes money - just so long as we mop it up at the end with a few $'s. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. To take pollution back out of the environment again is almost impossible, so once we have generated it we're pretty much stuck with it. No amount of tree planting, or renewable energy projects in other countries will make any difference to the fact we're heavily polluting the environment here. We need to look at the problem as whole thing that involves everyone, and we need to determine just how much pollution the environment can safely adsorb and how we can live within that limit. |
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