Has the carbon offset craze jumped the shark? Dell (DELL) earlier this year began letting customers pay a small carbon offset fee when they order their computers. The money is used to plant trees, which absorb carbon and thus theoretically cancel out the planet-warming greenhouse gases emitted by the production and use of individual customers’ laptops and desktops. Today Dell expanded its "Plant a Tree for Me" program to all customers – past and present – as well as, well, anyone who wants to go to the computer maker’s site and donate $99 to offset a year’s worth of their carbon emissions. Planting trees, of course, has environmental benefits beyond forests’ role in reducing global warming – though just how effective they are has been in dispute, as have carbon offset programs themselves. And Dell, along with Hewlett Packard (HPQ), certainly has made significant progress in ameliorating the environmental impact of its products through recycling programs. But absolving the sin of one’s personal greenhouse gas emissions via Visa or MasterCard is starting to become the environmental equivalent of slapping a bumper sticker on your car. Sure, it raises awareness and may be doing some real good but it does not require anyone to actually do anything to reduce their own contribution to global warming – like trading in the SUV, replacing light bulbs with CFLs or just saying no to paper and plastic. We’ll know things have really gone too far when you see Apple (AAPL) launch a "Plant a Tree for Steve" campaign.
The Corporate Carbon Offset Craze
March 7, 2007 by Todd Woody
Green Wombat 
I believe there are more trees living in North America now than when the first Europeans set foot on this continent.
Carbon offsets are fine for people who have more money to spend than they know what to do with it. There is no harm in planting a tree I guess, but good old-fashioned conservation efforts are the way to go in my mind.
Carbon offsets are a scam and I cannot believe people are dumb enough to fall for it. Where is the over sight? What percentage of your $99 ACTUALLY goes to planting trees etc? Are they planting trees that take 15 years to mature? Where are they planting these trees?
There are way too many questions with no answers and ZERO oversight. I’m sorry if you have fallen for Global Warming, but if you are that guilty for buying your Hummer H2 or whatever practice some personal restraint and buy a hybrid. No corporation would offer carbon offsets out of the goodness of their hearts unless they see a profit in it. It’s a fact of life because they are stock companies with Boards of Directors who have $$$$ in their eyes.
Please donate to a well know conservation group instead of entrusting your hard earned money to Billion Dollar corporations like Dell, have some common sense!
Offsets are complete nonsense and these companies will just want to cash-in on a fad. So now Dell found a way to landscape their campus and get YOU to pay for it. How nice for Mr. Dell.
Do something useful with that $99. Re-fit your house with CFL’s. Put the money towards replacing those leaky old windows in your house. How about replacing the threshhold under your front door and stopping that draft. Have your furnace/AC unit cleaned and inspected. Replace the filter in your furnace or AC unit. Buy the better tires for your car so you get better mileage. Get a tuneup so your car runs at top efficiency. Buy a bike and USE IT! Take the bus for a month. Buy a time-of-day thermostat. The list is endless and you will do a lot more for the ecology than giving a billionaire a handout.
Offsets are a great idea. Make someone feel guilty for a real or imagined sin, and tell them you can absolve them for a small fee. Reminds me of indulgences in late Medievil Europe. I remember everyone in the classroom would laugh and say “Ican’t believe anyone woud fall for that!” I can.
I went through Dell’s Plant a Tree for Me literature some time ago. It said a $6 donation covers 3 years of PC usage. The problem is, it’ll take a tree 70 years to absorbed the CO2 emissions that it’s supposed to offset. Doesn’t seem like a very balanced equation.
Maybe Carbonfund, Terrapass, etc should revise their formula to keep emissions/offsets within the same timeframe? In which case, real time carbon neutrality would cost desktop owners $138 every 3 years.
Well, the general idiocy of the modern world continues. People buy into global warming hook, line, and sinker without using any of their own critical thought to analyze the data themselves. Then they actually believe this BS from Dell about carbon offsets.
Global warming has been hitting countries across the globe. Wether we like it or not it is the reality that we are going to face.
But there is still hope, if we just make one step at a time to solve this problem.
Going for Hybrid and Biofuels could be a great factor in reducing pollutants.
For 100% emission free, Electric Cars is the ultimate solution. Lets go for green and help save the planet.
Another PR move from another multinational corporation. It would more useful if Dell would install solar panels in its buildings.
I can create my own Carbon offset. I Don’t have to wait for big business or government to do it.
Solar Solution
Get solar and get paid
Breathe Easy
Zero emissions
Reduce C02 Foot print
Renewable
Sustainability
Harness the SUN
The Suns Harvest
Energy Independence
PEACE HERE and NOW
Be part of the Solution
Create a better world
Be the change you want to see in the world
Let the Sun Shine in
http://www.thesunsharvest.com
I can’t stand it when one thing gets lumped in with something different, and everyone makes the leap as though nothing happened.
Is it good that Dell has focussed on recycling? Absolutely. The less we can pollute our environment, the better it will be for us all. This includes reducing emissions, as they’re pollution too. CFLs reduce emissions, but are filled with mercury. A better solution is LEDs.
Now the easily fooled will take what I said (protect the environment) and make an undeserved leap to “global warming”. There is only pseudo-science to support a correlation.
How about we stick to protecting the enrironment for its own good? I have a hint for you – global warming has happened long before humans existed, and will happen long after we leave.
Doesn’t Al Gore own and run the company that sells carbon offsets? Generation Investments.
Planting a tree does nothing other than to have a temporary effect on CO2 – what ultimately happens to the tree in ~100 years? Climate change is a long term issue and we just exited the last Ice Age about 100 years ago. 10,000 years ago Manhattan was under a 1,000 ft of ice and Jesus would have had to walk on water in his day to reach New Orleans since it was 40 miles into the ocean. Change is constant and we are a part of that equation.
Dell is more concerned with stock prices than ecology. This is really Dell’s mea culpa that in a world of competitive hierarchical primates, they can’t ecologically compete when their customers act in their own self-interest. So why not add a little more self-interested window dressing of their own to the mix?
I agree that concrete personal action should be everyone’s first step, if they want to help combating an upcoming climate crisis.
A few of those steps are: replacing traditional bulbs with CFLs, driving less, eating more vegetarian food, keeping the house colder in the winter and letting it be warmer in the summer to save heating and cooling energy. But there comes a point where you’ve replaced every bulb, are biking or walking as much as you can, eating all the healthy greens and vegetables you can tolerate and compensating for lack of a really comforable temperature by wearning next to nothing in the summer and putting on sweaters and coats in the winter.
And at that point, you’re still part of the problem with your CO2 emissions. Buying carbon offsets at that point is the only quick and effective step you can take to stop contributing to the problem entirely.
If all the people who consider carbon offsets a scam have taken all the steps they possibly can to reduce their emissions, I’m ready to listen to their concerns.
Until then, carbon offsets provide a fast reaction to a proven problem that can only be solved by everyone in the U.S. and in the rest of the world together.
There are many different types of carbon offsets, and they vary in their quality and the ability to verify them. As others have pointed out, offsets are not “papal indulgences”. Rather, those who buy offsets tend to be the same people who are conserving energy and consuming less- they are motivated enough to voluntarily impose a carbon tax on themselves, to offset what they cannot reduce. Offsets are currently financing all sorts of effective projects that are reducing carbon emissions, such as ag methane capture, wind project development, forest conservation, and energy efficiency improvements.
As to the person who thinks there are more trees now than before, sorry you are wrong- we’ve lost 1/3 of our forest cover in the US since Europeans arrived, and we cut our forests on much shorter rotations meaning we store much less carbon than we could (and did previously). It is not enough to plant trees, certainly, and tree-planting projects shouldn’t get full credit for benefits to be produced decades in the future, but that doesn’t make them a scam- it is just that much more attention should be placed on lengthening forest rotations of existing forests than on planting trees where forest doesn’t naturally grow.
Many of the people commenting on this site are very cynical, and dismiss the legitimate efforts of others to make a difference. Cynicism is a cop-out for those too lazy to do their homework, and to realize that global warming is real and that one can find solid carbon offsets that do make a difference. For some people, it is easier to believe that everything is a scam, and then they aren’t responsible to change their lifestyles or get off their butts and help out.
Yes, the planet has cooled and warmed in the past- that is irrelevant to the current warming, which scientists have determined is attributable mainly to human carbon emissions and will have disastrous consequences if not curtailed. Hundreds of millions of people could die or be displaced if we don’t address this problem immediately, but I guess some of you lazy cynical self-absorbed Americans who will never visit Bangladesh don’t care about that- you just want to get back to your “reality shows”.
I’ve got your carbon off-set. If you believe in this BS, put the gun barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger. This will accomplish 2 objectives. #1 You will no longer be manufacturing CO2 by breathing. #2 There will be one less moron on the planet.
I would like to set up a specific Carbon Credit System for a particular Industry in my Country.
This would need an International Carbon Credit rating(points-offset) to give real credibility.
Who do I need to approach and how do I go about it.
Awesome future!!!
I would like to set up a specific Carbon Credit System for a particular Industry in my Country.
This would need an International Carbon Credit rating(points-offset) to give real credibility.
Who do I need to approach and how do I go about it.
Awesome future!!!