Green Wombat takes public transport to work, uses compact fluorescent light bulbs in the Berkeley burrow, and dries the washing on a clothesline. But when it comes to air
travel, the wombat is a carbon criminal. The conundrum of being an
environmental journalist for a national magazine with a global outlook
is that the more I write about green technology the more I fly. So
far this year, Green Wombat has logged more than 70,000 air miles, which
according to some carbon calculators means I’m personally responsible for about 30,000 pounds of CO2 emissions from my frequent flying. In contrast, the average Californian’s carbon footprint from all activities is 26,301 pounds, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Of course, that plane is going to take off for London or Sydney whether you or I are on it or not, and barring the emergence of a slow travel movement, the number of flights is expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades.
So when I recently booked a flight on Virgin Blue – Richard Branson’s Australian airline – I guiltily pressed the green "Offset Flight Here" button and paid $2.41 to, as Virgin puts it, "fly carbon neutral" on my 900-mile trip. With U.S. carriers like Continental (CAL) and Delta (DAL) planning similar programs to allow fliers to pay a small fee to be invested in projects to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, Virgin Blue offers a look at one approach to airline offsetting.
Carbon offsetting is controversial, slammed by some as a "papal indulgence" that allows consumers to ease their conscience for a pittance without actually changing their behavior. For their part, corporations get to look green without directly reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. (The "A Better Environment at the Push of a Button" on the Virgin Blue home page doesn’t exactly dispel that notion.) Carbon offsetting services are proliferating but remain largely unregulated as do the offset projects themselves, which range from investments in renewable energy to flaring methane gas in landfills to preserving forests. Defenders say carbon offsetting provides needed financial support to worthwhile projects that have a direct impact on global warming as well as raise consciousness about global warming.
Virgin Blue’s program is notable on a couple of counts. First, the airline had its emissions audited so it could calculate the carbon footprint of its flights. Second, Virgin Blue only invests in greenhouse gas abatement projects certified by the Australian and New Zealand governments. In Australia, most of those are gas-flaring operations that burn off methane – a potent greenhouse gas – from landfills. Other approved projects include forest preservation and energy efficiency programs. (Notably absent are renewable energy projects – some 86 percent of Australia’s electricity is generated from coal-fired power plants.) In New Zealand – which, unlike Australia and the United States – has implemented the Kyoto Accord – many of the approved projects involve renewable energy production.
Lastly, Virgin makes the carbon offset option a prominent part of its online reservations system and offers extensive details about what the program does and does not do. With typical Aussie bluntness, one question in the FAQ reads, "If I offset my flight, this doesn’t really address the fact that emissions are still being released into the atmosphere from the aircraft I am flying on. Surely your campaign is just a cosmetic approach to a much larger problem?"
These airline offset programs will likely have little impact on the growing problem of jet greenhouse gas emissions – it’ll take technological breakthroughs like those being pursued by Boeing (BA) and Virgin Fuels to do that. But given that U.S. fliers already pay a 9/11 fee on airline tickets, a mandatory carbon tax on air travel would go a long way to supporting such efforts.
Green Wombat 
OK, so if I want to throw garbage out of my car window, all I have to do is contribute to litter clean up groups every now and then.
This is the absurdity of the global warming movement.
Hollywood actors who want you to use 1 square of toiletpaper are flying all over the world in private jets. “Killing the Earth”, according to them. Then they give some cash to their friends who set up bank accounts and say “But we’re SAVING THE EARTH”. Its a total scam.
offsets are nonsense. and a carbon tax since the government is already spending our money so wisely? get real. i never bought into global cooling in the 70s and won’t buy into global warming now. but through it all i’ve firmly believed we pump way too much crap into the air and water. pick your emission of choice. offsets do nothing to stop emissions.
I have to admit: doing something is better than doing nothing at all. But the ‘Carbon Neutral Indulgences’ are the most pathetic approach I have ever seen. Planting little trees so that I can continue to drive my Full-Size SUV and keep my house at a cozy 75 degrees all winter long is just ridiculous. But hey, somebody made a business out of this, which shows that the market will take care of the problem without any regulation, right?
And let’s not forget: global warming doesn’t exist.
But WMDs in Iraq do!
Purchasing carbon offsets is a vital part of fighting global warming and each of my companies can help you do your part. Just pay $100 for each 1,000 lbs of carbon you help create to ensure I can continue my wealth building strategy.
Ok, CO2 emissions are not the worlds biggest worry. Everyone seems to forget that trees get rid of CO2. So why dont we plant more trees than pretend to lower emissions. I know that one tree does practially nothing, but theres plenty of room to grow (no pun intended). Also there are millions of ways to reduce carbon emissions and reduce fuel usage, but people dont want to pay for it. Its that simple, no company that makes profits will spend money on something that is “green” untill the government tells them. Just last week Chicago IL, had so much rain that it had to dump its overflow from sewers and the river into Lake Michigan. The amount of toxins that were released are equal to almost 30 years worth of toxins that politicians made BP in Indiana stop from dumping into Lake Michigan. If you want to make a change, make the government make changes, and then dont whine about prices if they go up a little, green cost money.
Uh, WMDs in Iraq? Is someone desperately trying to change the subject? That would be just like throwing out something like “Bill Clinton lied under oath”? Its called “thread hijacking” and its a childish tactic when losing an argument.
There is one bright side to the ridiculous concept of carbon-offsets: the idiots who believe the global-warming nonsense will only be spending their OWN “be wasteful as ever but still feel good” money, and not mine (at least until the Clinton-Obama administration imposes a carbon-offset tax on everyone). If you’re REALLY serious about reducing consumption of natural resources and spewing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, then simply do less, buy less, and reproduce less. The Kennedys won’t allow electricity-generating windmills near their Hyannisport compund, but they don’t hesitate to populate the country with hundreds of little Kennedy babies that will spend their privileged lives exhaling carbon dioxide and flying around in private jets.
Actually, I throw my trash out the window of my car so it does not end up generating toxic methane gas from a landfill.
…no need to thank me, just doing my bit.
I think carbon offsets will have the opposite effect… As the advent of Social Security (while well-intentioned) caused people to not take responsibility for their retirement, so to will carbon offsets remove one’s personal commitment to make a difference.
When Social Security goes away an entire generation will be at risk – I fear the same effect of carbon offsets… Several generations pay into the carbon offset system, the government decides to use the proceeds to balance the budget, and we all end up in a world of 110-degree winters (aka Hell).
All this abstract stuff about whether carbon offsets are a scam rather loses sight of the fact that atmospheric CO2 just keeps rising and rising:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Carbon offsetting, at best, has no beneficial affect in reducing global emissions. At worst it may be increasing them by enabling more people in the developing world to climb aboard the industrial bandwagon.
Michael K, you my friend are a genuin idiot! littering does not help anything, all you are doing is turning the whole planet into a toxic land fill, and risking getting a fine, also to anyone who seriously thinks that globle warming is not happening, why do you care enough to even respond to and spend your time reading the artical, and it IS happening, it is possable that in a few generations, there will be another mass extinction just as there was at the end of the crestacion period when globle warming took place warming the waters in the oceons causeing toxins from the bottoms of the oceons to rise up and bubble up out of the surface of the water releasing it into the air because the water could no longer hold enough oxygen killing most organisms in the oceon and near the coast, there is a lake now that is so deep that the bottom is so warm that it is toxic, when they take a sample of water from the bottom and bring it to the top it is bright pink and smells of rotten eggs, also, I think that the offsetting could be a good think as long as people and the government don’t take advantage of it and use it as a suplement for regusing their CO2 output
sure, the world is getting warmer. is it the fault of fossil fuel related CO2? we will never know, after all man only has detailed weather records for maybe 200 years? the ice cores that scientists are reading are unreliable at best. i am tired of people taking a scientific THEORY, remember global CLIMATE CHANGE ( im tired of saying global warming) is a THEORY! and using it as if it was a fact to base policy changes that will no doubt change the face of the economic environment world wide! Carbon offsets are a JOKE!!!!!! all that they ( the offsets) are really doing is putting more money into the enviro-capitalists pocket. i am all for capitalism but i am NOT for duping the United States public into taking a theory for a fact and using it to make money. lying to people to make money is called a scam! that is all that carbon offsetting is. i love my gas guzzling vehicles and am an avid motor sports enthusiast, however i am all for increasing CAFE ( corporate average fuel economy) standards for vehicles. i would love it if my new truck got 30 mpg, i would love it if we could stop importing oil from the middle east. all that Carbon offsetting is doing is covering up the real issues that we have with the energy markets.
The best offsets are paid to lumber companies after they harvest the trees, they replant them anyways so they might as well get your 2.50 while they are saving the planet.
Green Wombat, why all the flying? In this era of video conferencing and email, surely most business trips can be avoided altogether? I am in software sales and while my customers would like to see me in person more often (and my wife would surely welcome the break), the 1000s of pounds of CO2 required does not really justify that personal touch. I live 25 miles north of my office in San Francisco and I see it maybe once a week. I think most people can work from home far more than they think just by challenging the conventional wisdom around where one should work (home/office/client, etc).
It’s the nature of my work as a journalist. For certain stories I need to have first-hand knowledge and experience of what I’m reporting on.
I agree the offsets are a bit of a stretch especially if people think “all I have to do is pay a fee, change a lightbulb, and I’m good, and I can keep on with my lifestyle”.
We really need to change in a big way… we need to drastically reduce our oil burning all over the world. Even if some don’t believe in buy into global warming (its kind of hard not to see it happening all around us), we also happen to have peak oil looming over our heads, which will force us to reduce our oil use… no fee paid there… real reductions will happen even if we don’t want to change. When gas costs $7 per gallon, everyone will change. When there are shortages as happened here in the 70s, people will change, because this will not be temporary as it was back then.
What we really need to be doing is focusing our efforts on redesigning our cities and suburbs and our economy to phase out oil. We need compact walkable communities where people can get to things by walking, riding bicycles, and clean electric trains powered by renewable energy. We need to be growing our food organically, and locally. All these things enable us to still live a good life, but cut out our huge wastes of oil. By far the most wasteful thing we do in America is having thousands of miles of traffic jams every day with each person driving huge gas-guzzling cars, moving at a snails pace. How crazy is that? This will change over the next decade, and it would certainly be better if we planned the substitute instead of experiencing a crash of our economy and society.
We need to start now because it takes time to build train systems and densify our suburbs. There is no time to wait. We need to stop building roads and sprawl, and start building more train systems, more compact towns and ciites. We have lots of great models right here in the US. People who live in places like Washington DC, historic Boston, San Fran, New York City, all have better lives because they can walk to things, and are not prisoners to their cars and stuck in traffic jams all the time.
Offsets are a feel good illusion. The credits come mostly from people who would not use the pollution rights anyway. So the buyers are paying a windfall to someone else for the right to feel good about being an excessive poluter.
Carbon Offset will be the next financial derivative.
Sliced and distributed, packaged with auto and industrial gas turbine loans, CDOs (carbon deduction orignations) cashflow, and hey what have we got – another ponzi scheme to make Wall Street veterans and market makers very rich. You no longer need to worry about the Fed’s tinkering with interest rates – just change the price tag for every 1000 kg of carbon.
Could it possibly be that weather patters change over the course of time? Sometimes it’s hotter, sometimes it’s colder. In the past 100 years there have been no less than 4 changes in thought on a coming ice age or “global warming”. I have seen no reliable proof that this theory is correct and especially no link between human’s and the so called global warming. I love how people always blame America as being the greatest pollutant, but currently that distinction goes to the not so great country of China. The majority of factories throughout the world would never survive here because of all the enviro-nazis in America. If humans are to blame for this recent shift in weather, then why has the temperature on Mars increased over the same period of time we are discussing? Dang ET and his Hummer H2.
Emissions offsets do not reduce emissions. It might be argued that the Al Gores of the world should be allowed to pollute according to their net worth, but in no circumstance should the Al Gores of the world be allowed to purchase CO2 offsets from the destitute. Let the Al Gores of the world reduce their consumption instead.
I think that article shows how hard it is for even individual companies to make a real difference. That $2 would be better spent on lobbyists, but would of course be instantly matched by the oil, gas, and coal companies, who would raise their prices and pass the cost on to you. Until there’s a political will in the US, nothing’s going to change, and even then, China and Russia will still emit co2 so what’s the point.
Carbon offsetting makes sense right now. Like Todd said, the airplane will take off with or without him. We are in a transition economy from fossil fuels to alternative energies. A great offsetting program would be for Business 2.00 to offset their carbon footprint by donating or financing one of the windmills in the country.
The Global Warming Debate is over! You must not have received the memo from the more than 900 scientists who are all in agreement. The denial machine has been exposed, so you can stop it. Newsweek did an excellent story recently that exposed the well funded denial machine that for years cast doubt if this is real, continually calling it “theory”, and then saying it was sunspots, and other nonesense.
You are not helping the cause by trying to prevent solutions from being put into practice, and you actually could eventually be held responsible for making the problem worse. Here is the Newsweek article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/page/0/
And here is the New York Times story “Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Unequivocal’”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/03/science/earth/03climate.html?ex=1333080000&en=2d929bf2c421b7e4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
So now instead of wasting all our time debating something that has already been proven to be true, why don’t you come up with viable solutions, which will also serve as solutions to peak oil.
Actually the flight statement is not true. If less people are flying, the airlines will cut back the number of flights, and will cancil flights for not enough passengers… they do it all the time.
15 years ago, I sat in an environmental chemistry class where the topic of CO2 emissions and global warming was discussed. The prof showed us a video clip of a scientist arguing that CO2 was not the culprit, as the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was already absorbing all of the energy being radiated by the sun and reradiated by the earth it possibly could. Because of mixing in the atmosphere, the CO2 didn’t trap all the energy at ground level. His point was that CO2 was naturally occuring and there was already a lot of it in the atmosphere. He claimed the culprits were actually the “new” manmade chemicals that were absorbing energy from wavelengths that previoously would have been radiated back into space (ie CFCs and petrochemicals). From my perspective it made sense and no one has ever explained to me why this is not the case. Interestingly enough, I have never heard any more aboout this scientist or his theory. (Don’t get me wrong – I do believe there is enough evidence to substantiate the claim of global warming, but I think we may have ignored real science by choosing the ignorant masses science).
By the way, those people who support the idea of scrubbing the CO2 emissions from smokestacks should know that the chemicals used are often produced by removing CO2 from them in the first place and allowing that CO2 to be emitted. Net zero effect, except that chemical companies make money and we pay for it in the cost of doing business.
Julie:
If you are looking for a scientific understanding on our enviroment, I have found this blog very useful: http://environmentaldefenseblogs.org/climate411/
You can even ask a question to the senior scientist for the enviromental defense. You have to register to leave a message on the suggetion box.