If you must buy carbon offsets, caveat emptor -- in particular, don't buy them from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). That is the point of a terrific front-page article in the Washington Post: "Value of U.S. House's Carbon Offsets Is Murky, Some Question Effectiveness of $89,000 Purchase to Balance Out Greenhouse Gas Emissions."
Yes, it is nice to be quoted above the fold in any major newspaper -- the quote in the headline is from me -- but the reason I think the article is important is that the reporter took the time to track down the offset projects the taxpayer money went to. The results are not encouraging. I am not a fan of offsets -- and certainly wasn't a fan of the House buying offsets from the CCX in the first place.
But I was surprised by the overall lameness of the specific projects and utterly shocked to read the words of CCX CEO Richard Sandor (a man I have a fair amount of respect for):
It basically rewards people for having done things that had environmental good in the past and incentivizes people to do things that have environmental good in the future.
Shame on him for having this policy, and double shame if he actually believes it is the right thing. Offset money is supposed to cause carbon emissions reductions that would not otherwise have happened without that money (the so-called additionality criteria), in order to offset our own emissions (which we have first worked hard to reduce). We are most certainly not expecting our money go to rewarding people for having done things that had environmental benefit in the past. Geez -- I've done a whole bunch of things that had environmental benefit in the past -- see list here -- does that mean I'm entitled to some of Sandor's CCX money? Absurd!
An old friend of mind, consultant Mark Trexler, put it well in the article when he said, "If you don't have additionality, you know what you're getting. You're getting nothing."
Kudos to uber-capitalist Sandor. He has proven you can get nothing for something.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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GreenEngineer Posted 3:05 am
29 Jan 2008
If we want to preserve ecosystem services, we're going to have to come up with some way to assign monetary value to those services, and turn that into revenue for those who steward those resources. The carbon offset model, while a poor way to combat climate change, may be an example of a way to do that for ecosystem services generally. And the fact that people (and big companies) are willing to pay to support good behavior is encouraging.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:20 am
29 Jan 2008
Don't fall for more scamming. Pretending to let markets work. the only way to get GHG reduction is for government to divert subsidies and tax breaks for multinational oil and energy corporations to incentives for homeowners and small businesses to invest in renewable energy and conservation.
Government must use these reclaimed tax dollars for mass production orders of plugin hybrids, solar panels, wind machines, geo heat exchange heating/cooling systems.. and so forth, for government use. All made in the USA. just like WW 2 war production.
Bolster the economy by giving out green jobs. Revive detroit with green cars. Revive the manufacturing base.
Forget "free" marketeerian scamming. It's a dead end, look what they did in the case of the sub prime mortgage bubble. No faux carbon trading, offsets are the warning.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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