Carbon Offsets

There is something I find mind-numbingly stupid, and astonishingly brilliant at the same time: Carbon Offsets.


The Wiki defines carbon offsetting like this:
Carbon offsetting is the act of mitigating ("offsetting") greenhouse gas emissions. A well-known example is the purchase of carbon offsets to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions caused by personal air travel.

One company you could buy offsets from is a company called Climate Care. They have a carbon calculator, to show you how many "carbon credits" you should buy to become "carbon neutral".
I ran the calculator to show how much I would owe. here's what it looks like:

Your emissions from this car are 5.25 Tonnes
The cost to offset this CO₂ will be £39.38

Hmm.. So if I wanted to compensate for my large carbon footprint, I'd have to shell out about 78 dollars to this company, that would in turn use that money for things like paying people to not chop down the forest.

That's brilliant! Do whatever you want, and throw money at the problem to make it go away.
Let me use that logic in all other fields...

There are some bad, rich people in this world. I feel sorry for them, because a lot of times, their badness is what allowed them to be rich in the first place, like politicians and mafiosos. I propose a solution: Evil Offsets. I, and a group of moral, wholesome individuals will offset the evil that they do, for a small fee. The service costs 5 dollars per credit, with one credit buying ten minutes of good behavior. In the future, I'll provide Evil calculators, so that potential clients can measure their "Malice Footprint", so they can become "Morally Neutral".

How about one for heiresses and pop celebrities? "Stupid Offsets"! For every credit, I'll spent ten minutes studying.

If anyone is interested, I'll set up a paypal account, so that you can start making your conscience feel better... Hey, at least SOMEONE is doing something, right? Heck, give me money! I promise I won't chop down the forest!

In the end, I think carbon offsets are a fad that will soon go the way of the pet rock. Charities are good, since they don't imply that you're "neutralizing" your own actions, forcing you to be proactive as well as charitable. Hopefully, the media circus will get bored with global warming (just like they did with AIDS, endangered species, and the continent of Africa) enough so that people can start to think rationally about the situation, and come up with real solutions, if there are any.

Tags: Carbon credits, offset, carbon footprint, stupid ideas