Carbon Credit Debate

Finally, someone is making sense to me on the issue of carbon credits. This excerpt from Charles Komanoff's recent Grist article (that's eco-activist economist Charles Komanoff, according to the magazine) makes the so simple common-sense but overlooked argument that carbon credits don't actually reduce carbon emissions - they just assuage the accompanying guilt for those so inclined to feel guilty.

I think we should fund clean energy for sure, but we still need to give the car a rest if we want to clean up our skies.

"When you stop and think about it, the whole idea of driving a car, paying money into a green kitty to offset the CO2 from burning the gas, and then calling the car trip carbon-neutral, is ludicrous.

The windmills may offset the driving, mathematically, but so what? The windmills should, and likely could, have been built without my 6 cents or even Dave's $216,000. (Indeed, wind turbines and other clean energy would be sprouting up everywhere, without green offsets, if the prices of fossil fuels included a charge for their climate destructiveness.) Crediting me or the DMB with climate neutrality for financing green energy, while the actual implementer -- a wind developer here, an insulation installer or a mass transit builder there -- also takes credit, is double-counting.

But it's worse than padding the books. Carbon offsets are disturbingly redolent of the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages, by which the wealthy could expiate their sins without prayer or good works by greasing the palms of the Church hierarchy. Leaving aside whether carbon emitting is 'sinful,' the purchase of carbon offsets smacks of the same corruption that turned indulgences into 'get out of Purgatory free' cards and helped set off the Protestant Reformation."

Carbon offsets: what would Gandhi do? | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Magazine