FReepmail me to get on or off
Click pn POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
"Horsepucky of the day award"
Posted on 03/10/2007 5:57:47 PM PST by bruinbirdman
SCHEMES used by environmentally conscious consumers to cut their “carbon footprint” could take up to a century to deliver the promised benefits, a study has suggested.
Researchers found it takes that length of time for “carbon offsetting” — which often involves the planting of trees in the developing world — to absorb the greenhouse gases emitted by a single flight.
Dozens of fortunes have been made in recent years by entrepreneurs offering people and businesses the chance to neutralise their carbon emissions for a fee.
The new research, carried out by scientists at the Tyndall Centre, based at the University of East Anglia, and Sweden’s Lund University, suggests that such schemes may, in fact, do little more than salve the consciences of those paying for them.
“What we are seeing here is the emergence of a new and completely unregulated financial market,” said Lund’s Professor Stefan Gossling, who led the study.
“These schemes may eventually recapture the carbon people emit now but will only finish the job after most of them have died. That is too long.”
The schemes studied by Gossling included one offered by British Airways to its passengers through Climate Care, a British carbon offsetting company.
It found that an offset bought through the scheme would take about 100 years to recapture the carbon emitted by a flight.
This is because Climate Care includes forestry in its offsetting portfolio, meaning that carbon emitted can be recaptured only as fast as a tree can grow.
The research coincides with a sharp rise in the political temperature over climate change. Last week EU leaders agreed to cut European carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.
The voluntary carbon offsetting market has sprung from the same global concern over carbon emissions.
There are now dozens of companies charging fees to help people and organisations deal with their carbon emissions. One of the richest is Climate Change Capital, a merchant bank specialising in low-carbon investments, which controls funds of more than £500m and has made millionaires of its founders, James Cameron and Lionel Fretz.
The firm specialises in big industrial projects. Most offsetting companies prefer, however, to support smaller energy-efficiency projects and renewable energy schemes.
A favourite is to buy low-energy lightbulbs for distribution in developing countries. Such schemes can take years to recover the carbon emitted by, say, a flight, but when forestry is the chosen offset mechanism this can stretch into decades.
“When companies offer to offset a single flight over a period of 100 years then the schemes lose credibility,” said Gossling. “How can anyone predict the fate of a forest? A hundred years from now it could burn down and all that carbon would be released.”
Some forestry projects have ended in spectacular failures. Coldplay, the rock group, sponsored 10,000 mango trees in southern India to offset the environmental impact of its 2002 album, A Rush of Blood to the Head.
By last year, however, the trees, supplied by Future Forests, now The CarbonNeutral Company, had withered and died.
Jonathan Shopley, chief executive of The CarbonNeutral Company, said the firm had since moved out of forestry and in to schemes such as wind farms and low-energy lighting. “Any offsets taken out with us in future will recover the relevant carbon emissions within four years,” he said.
The turnover of the CarbonNeutral Company has risen sharply to £4m a year and it has just signed up Silverjet, a new air-line dedicated to business class passengers. It charges an average £999 for a return flight between New York and London — of which £11 goes towards offsetting each passenger’s carbon emissions.
David Wellington, managing director of Climate Care, said: “Many of the criticisms raised over offsetting were valid. This is a young industry and it is still settling down, but the standards are improving very fast. For example, we have already moved out of forestry into renewable energy projects that reduce the time over which offsets take effect.”
But others believe that carbon offsetting is deeply flawed. Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, said it was little more than a mechanism to allow rich westerners to ease their consciences.
“What we are really doing is paying poor people to reduce their carbon emissions so that we can maintain our luxury lifestyles. If we really want to live sustainably we are going to have to accept the knocks and give up things like flying. In the end they are unsustainable,” he said.
Click pn POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
I don't leave a carbon footprint. Mine's more akin to a great dane rolling on a dead possum.
It will probably take 200 years to offset Al "Bigfoot" Gore's Carbon footprint.
This is BS. Al Gore has already offset his carbon footprint and he did it in 5 minutes.
Offsetting the carbon footprint created by Tipper Gore's dietary habits would take decades.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Pssst..hey you, wanna buy some offsets? Cheap.
Would those be the quick acting offsets, like X-Lax, or the slower acting offsets, like Metamucil?
It would take at least 10 pof those whackos working 24 houra a day to offset the one that i'm doing my best to leave behind.
I think this comment warrants the........
I had beans for supper!
This is absolutely hilarious!
The Times is a great newspaper. A lot of Freepers run it down because it disagrees with American conservative viewpoints sometimes (gasp! imagine that- a British paper looking at the news from a British perspective) but it is a good paper. If you read this article closely it is obvious the Times is making fun of the environmentalists and global warming scare mongers. It's just very subtle. I like that sort of subterfuge.
you are DOOMED!!!
I've go some carbon footprints for sale....1/2 price. If interested please send me your account number and pin.
There are suckers and charlatans born every second...
By fate -- they always seem to meet up with each other.....
They deserve each other...
Semper Fi
I just put long tube headers on my C6 Corvette (SWEET) Will trade barely used Catalytic Converters for Carbon Credits, or Ann Coulter poster. You pay shipping:)
Who would have thought that all these guys who claim to have so much "science" on their side, would prove to be so unscientific?
I offset it by eating some rose petals!
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