Planet Under Pressure was a major conference on the environment held in London last week. As a climate-change scientist, I was invited to organize a session at it and to present my group's research. I declined the offer, and here is why.
The organizers of the conference said that the event would be “as close to carbon neutral as possible”. There are good ways to achieve this noble goal: virtual engagement such as video conferencing, advice on lower-carbon travel options, and innovative registration tariffs to reward lower-carbon involvement. But, instead, the organizers chose a series of carbon-offset projects financed through a compulsory £35 (US$56) fee levied on all delegates.
This was unacceptable to me. Offsetting is worse than doing nothing. It is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth.
It is true that the projects funded through these and other offsets can help development. And a rise in emissions from industrializing nations is, in the short term, a good indicator of rising prosperity and should be welcomed.
My objection to offsetting and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — the state-sanctioned version that operates under the Kyoto Protocol — is directed at the claims that they reduce emissions to levels at or below those that would have transpired had the activity being offset not occurred. That spurious argument neglects the various possible impacts of an offset and the repercussions of these for emissions in the longer term.
The science underpinning climate change makes clear that the temperature rise by around the end of this century will relate to the total emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2100. Consequently, when considering our impact, we have to look at the total sum of our emissions released in that time; offset projects must be measured over that period. There is no point in reducing emissions by 1 tonne in the short run if the knock-on impact is 2 tonnes emitted in 2020 or even 1.5 tonnes in, say, 2050. The implications of this for the concept of offsetting and the CDM are profound.
“Carbon offsetting is without scientific legitimacy and is dangerously misleading.”
For example, if I fly to a climate conference, any claim to offset my emissions must, with a reasonable level of certainty and for a 100-year period, show that the flight emissions plus any emission consequences of the offset projects ultimately sum to zero. It is the immutable impossibility of making such long-term assurances that fundamentally challenges the value of such a claim. Worse still, in a world with rising economic prosperity (fuelled mainly by coal, oil and gas), there is a high probability that offsetting projects contributing to prosperity will increase emissions over and above those arising solely from the activity being offset.
The promise of offsetting triggers a rebound away from meaningful mitigation and towards the development of further high-carbon infrastructures. The UK government's purchase of offsets through the CDM and its simultaneous drive towards both additional airport capacity and the exploitation of UK shale-gas reserves are just two such examples. If offsetting is deemed to have equivalence with mitigation, the incentive to move to lower-carbon technologies, behaviours and practices is reduced accordingly.
Offsetting, on all scales, weakens present-day drivers for change and reduces innovation towards a lower-carbon future. It militates against market signals to improve low-carbon travel and video-conference technologies, while encouraging investment in capital-intensive airports and new aircraft, along with roads, ports and fossil-fuel power stations.
For an offset project to be genuinely low-carbon, it must guarantee that it does not stimulate further emissions over the subsequent century. Although standards and legislation around offsetting and the CDM sometimes consider 'carbon leakage' in the projects' early years, it is impossible to quantify with any meaningful level of certainty over the timeframes that matter. To do so would presume powers of prediction that could have foreseen the Internet and low-cost airlines following from Marconi's 1901 telegraph and the Wright brothers' 1903 maiden flight.
Assume I broke my (self-imposed) seven-year refusal to fly, paid my £35 offset and boarded a plane from Manchester to London for the conference. In doing so, I add to the already severe congestion at airports, causing delays and allowing politicians to argue for greater airport capacity, arguments only reinforced by the rise in passengers turning to offsets. To meet increasing demand, airlines are encouraged to order new aircraft, which they promise will be more efficient. Feeling pressure, a future government approves new runways, but the extra flights and emissions swamp efficiency gains from the cleaner engines.
Meanwhile, in an Indian village where my offset money has helped to fund a wind turbine, the villagers now have the (low-carbon) electricity to watch television, which provides advertisers of a petrol-fuelled moped with more viewers, and customers. A fuel depot follows, to meet the new demand, and encourages others to invest in old trucks to transport goods between villages. Within 30 years, the village and surroundings have new roads and many more petrol-fuelled mopeds, cars and trucks. Meanwhile, the emissions from my original flight are still having a warming impact, and will do for another 100 years or so.
Where is the offset in that?
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 484,
- Pages:
- 7
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/484007a
Kevin, your last example is misleading. It seems to imply your offset would bequeath free electricity where there is none and will never be any. The reality is many "Indian villagers" are willing and are paying for electricity however it is generated. If not from the wind, then from a generator, coal or some other means... which they will use it to watch the same commercials, build the same roads, drive the same vehicles. To insinuate this will not happen because you did not contribute your 35 GBP worth of carbon credits is delusional.
The point of carbon offsets is to make the cleaner options cost effective, whether it be renewable energy, energy efficient TVs or low emission vehicles. Unless there is some way to make less carbon intensive options economically viable in poorer countries, they will not be chosen. Ignoring this when over half of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from developing nations, ignores some of the most cost effective ways to address climate change. Movements towards these solutions are useful; boasts about publicity stunts taking up space in what is (supposed to be) a science publication are not.
This article is complete nonsense, from beguining to end. It is like saying recycling doesn´t make sense because our first priority should be focusing in not producing waste. We must have solutions for our problems. Offseting is not the only solution, and yes, we should reduce first and yes, not all carbon credits are good, but questioning the only mechanism that overseas the generation of credits with strict rules with demonstrable ignorance of how it works... I think that we must be informed to make this kinds of opinions, it is not serious. Carbon credits are a way to clean development, and for the serious offseting companies, it is only used for neutralizing the same amount of emissions and it is retired after it is generated. In CDM only proving the reduction has already taken place the credit is emited. Please read carefully UNFCCC information.
I applaud your skepticism of carbon offsets and your math. I grew up near Nashville, not far from Al Gore's home, so when I learned that one of our fading politicians was advocating selling "offsets" for an atmospheric gas (and not even the most heat-trapping one), when he himself burned many times the energy of the average American, telling the rest of us to ride bikes and change our light bulbs, I was seriously skeptical. We have a history of getting fleeced by politicians... If people are serious about trying to combat climate change, we simply have to use less energy. A lot less. Live close to work. Walk or ride a bike. Build houses and workplaces with good natural lighting and ventilation. Don't turn on something electric or gas-powered to do a task you can do by hand, or live without. Work physically hard. My ancestors, including my parents (in their 60s now), lived in an electricity-optional world, with few motorized vehicles and a lot of hard manual labor. If people really think we can stop the climate from warming/changing, they have to consider the full ramifications of that conviction and act accordingly. Carbon offsets, "green" clothing, and CFLs won't do it. You are acting on what you believe, and that is admirable.
Yoav Kashiv – there is no way to guarantee the fate of trees and their wood – look at the millions of ha of dying trees in N America due to bark beetles, most probably aggravated by climate change. Or the increasing number of drought-linked forest and plantation fires. So who is to say what will happen to offset plantations? And even if they get to maturity, who is going to provide chain of custody of wood once cut to ensure it doesn't get burnt – e.g. sold to a local power station in 50 years time – do you have that much faith in such schemes?
Is it only me or does this attitude seem silly. Its a bit like arguing that you should not use condoms because it encourages sex. Like sex, carbon generating activities will happen. Protecting yourself from the consequences is sensible, whether or not it encourages sex.
Well said! I agree with most of the arguments.
However, I wonder if there aren't offset projects that truly reduce emissions in the long run, like planting trees?
How can any policy "guarantee that it does not stimulate further emissions over the subsequent century"? The future is very difficult to predict, as the author rightly states. But he offers no explicit alternatives to offsets. The implicit alternative seems to be a reduction of everyone's standard of living down to that hypothetical Indian village.
I share much of the author's skepticism about offsets, but not for the reasons he states. Is he really saying it would be better if there were no mechanisms for wealthy nations to fund low-carbon electricity in third-world countries? Or, if not, that there are other funding mechanisms that are better for the climate?
The basic arguments here make sense, but it doesn't answer a fundamental question for those of us who are required to fly due to job or family commitments. It's one thing to refuse to fly to a conference; it's another to refuse your employer's demands or to refuse to attend the funeral of a close family member who lived far away. We can work with our employers to promote greater use of videoconferencing, but that takes time. In the meantime, if we have to fly, is it better to fly and offset to mitigate our impact even if only temporarily, or fly and not participate in the offset market?
My personal approach to this is to fly (and drive) only as a last resort when no other alternatives are available or practical (e.g., I could have taken the train to a recent family member's funeral but it would have taken 46 hours roundtrip compared with a 6-hour roundtrip flight). And when I do fly or drive, I purchase offsets. But I don't view the availability of offsets as an excuse or encouragement to fly or drive more often.