Neither have I [except when Al Gore sneaks onto my television screen], but I came across a website that is selling 'Carbon Offsets'. If I buy enough carbon offsets, they'll give me the assurance that I've canceled out all the bad stuff I'm doing to the environment. Does this also mean there is a site somewhere that will take my money and forgive me for other bad things I do or contemplate doing?
I drive an SUV that calculates out to producing 27,174 lbs of carbon dioxide per year. If I pay this company $79.95 for the first year, I'm off the hook for being such an environmental hazard. I get a static-cling window decal telling everyone how great I am and a bumper sticker. The company sends my money to somebody else who'll plant trees or build wind generator farms or whatever seems to be the 'saving grace' of the day. They assure me that all this is audited by the Center for Resource Solutions, a non-profit (which must mean I can trust them implicitly) organization that apparently knows that there really is global warming and that we humans are so smart that we can reverse it even though it seems these cycles have gone on and remain unchecked for ages.
If, by now, I'm really feeling guilty, I can also buy carbon offsets to cover my home. My home calculates to produce 31,551 pounds of carbon dioxide annually (and they remind me this is the equivalent of burning 1,613 gallons of gasoline). It will only cost me $159.68 a year, but they tell me I can reduce that by using their home energy tips. Those tips include: washing with cold water, turning off my lights, getting rid of a second refrigerator [which I'll have go out and buy], and using CFL bulbs [even though those are dangerous because they contain mercury]. Now I am forced to try to decide between carbon dioxide and mercury as to which is worse for me and the planet.
By the way, I can buy carbon offsets to take care of weddings, and I can give carbon offset gifts, too.
This has been a bit tongue in cheek as you've probably surmised. The company is located in San Francisco [who'd have guessed that?]. It was founded by a college professor [who'd have thought that possible?]. It is run by people who appear to be thirty or younger, and who have credentials from several liberal universities [sorry for the redundancy].
Nowhere did I find an offset coupon available to ward off the nasty effects of bovine flatulence, however. That should be a big seller in Wisconsin. I suspect that they're working on that but I can't be certain. Nowhere do they mention giving money to the home for displaced polar bears. It seems they're missing some opportunities.
ABC News did a story about this company and carbon offsets on April 22, 2007. It was filled with phrases like "a way to theoretically cancel out or neutralize the carbon dioxide that you produce", and reminds us that Al Gore lives in a 20 room house with a $30,000 annual utility bill while he claims his life is "carbon neutral".
The topper for me was learning that carbon offsets and carbon credits are traded as commodities on the open market, and this trade activity is a multi-billion dollar per year business.
Given the lack of anything but assumptions that, to me, are not based on fact since the facts don't exist, this whole thing would come near being called a 'scam'. People are paying other people for absolution of their environmental sins but continue to do that for which they were absolved. Nothing changes except that some money moves from one place to another in the name of eliminating global warming.
But, of course, I forget the Nobel peace prize having been awarded to Mr. Gore. Shame on me!
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. George Bernard Shaw
