Lordy, this is getting out of hand:
Under the agreement announced Wednesday, the Forest Service and the National Forest Foundation will allow individuals or groups to make charitable contributions that will be used to plant trees and do other work to improve national forests.
...
Under the new program, known as the Carbon Capital Fund, consumers can "offset" their carbon emissions by investing in projects on national forests to plant trees and improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat and help restore public lands damaged by natural disasters such as wildfires.
Tell me, why can't you give money to "plant trees and improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat and help restore public lands damaged by natural disasters such as wildfires" just because those are laudable goals in and of themselves? Why the carbon hook?
I won't reject this scheme a priori -- I guess it's possible that they're really including "independent verification of projects that have a 'specific and measurable' reduction in carbon dioxide emissions." But it's getting a little surreal. I'm glad average folk are willing to pay for carbon reductions, but is that really all they'll pay money for? Do all other worthwhile projects have to tap into this same concern?
As I see it, the voluntary carbon offset market is something like privatized charity. Instead of giving money to an NGO in hopes of making some unknowable incremental difference, you give money to an outfit that will rigorously insure and verify for you exactly how much difference you're making. For that service, they take a cut.
As I've said here before, I have no objection to the business model in principle. Indeed, maybe it could be extended to other areas.
After all, living a normal American life, you consume X number of trees. So why not tree offsets? You can pay to have some trees planted (or preserved). Clean water offsets. Particulate pollution offsets. Land-use offsets. Etc.
If Americans are willing to voluntarily pay to improve the environment, hell, let's give them as many ways to do so as possible. It's getting a little goofy, everyone trying to squeeze onto the carbon bandwagon. There are, after all, other environmental ills.
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Comments
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Hmdowd6 Posted 6:47 am
25 Jul 2007
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naturescene Posted 7:16 am
25 Jul 2007
you can give $ to "plant trees and improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat and help restore public lands damaged by natural disasters such as wildfires", and people do, but not in the numbers that we'd like to see.
Elsewhere I mentioned that there is no point to call them "carbon" offsets and we could easily switch to calling them something simple like "environmental protection credits" or "ecological credits". But carbon is in the center of the the environmental "movement" these days. There's also a lot of it, so it makes for a big market.
The whole point is to eventually move into a completely open market for ecological goods and services like habitat, water filtration, buffering, etc. The offsets serve as the intermediary to that realization.
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wiscidea Posted 7:49 am
25 Jul 2007
If people start volunteering a LITTLE BIT of money to preserve national forests, will the Republicans see it as a green light to cut ALL federal funding for preserving national forests?
However much I hate slippery slope objections, I'd like to know whether this could be a serious problem. Opinions?
Forward!
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justlou Posted 9:13 am
25 Jul 2007
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Green Granny Posted 9:23 am
25 Jul 2007
I still would also like to see a carbon tax or pollution tax or energy waster tax. . .
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:07 am
25 Jul 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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spaceshaper Posted 10:16 am
25 Jul 2007
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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JMG Posted 3:31 pm
25 Jul 2007
Gotta keep shoveling the coal into the firebox on this runaway train, don'cha know ... keep buying, keep consuming, keep spending, and for God's sake don't question whether such "progress" and "growth" is actually taking us further and further down the wrong path ...
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Pangolin Posted 7:50 pm
25 Jul 2007
Except if you know anything about forestry clearing the small stuff actually increases the longevity of the old growth. Planting trees does nothing to increase carbon storage in the real world. Where they would grow without assistance they tend to plant themselves. Where they require protection and nurturing we tend to plant and ignore them and they die.
Should we ask the russions to turn the Siberian forests to charcoal in order to store the carbon? If they started at one end by the time they got to the other end the forest will have regrown but I doubt it would add up to much benefit.
Carbon credit schemes are scams.
Put the Carbon Back
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