Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, "Physician, heal thyself," before presuming to heal other people.
This rule is so obvious I almost forgot it. And yet many people, including Google and PG&E, don't seem to get it.
The whole point of offsets is not to make you feel good, and it's not to allow you to continue polluting as much as you want (by, say, supporting new coal plants or other dirty forms of power). Offsets are cheap and in some sense bastardized emissions reductions (more on this in a future post).
In general, the point of offsets is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and specifically to allow you to offset any emissions that are left over after you have cleaned up your own act -- or to offset emissions from one-time events such as concerts.
While the other rules apply to offsets themselves, and thus can be independently verified in a fairly rigorous fashion, this rule applies to a whole range of polluting activities a company or person can take part in, and requires a judgment call. What is "everything reasonably possible"?
Google's plan to burn coal and then buy offsets won't make the cut. PG&E's plan to sell offsets to people (trees, no less!) -- rather than selling them green power -- just makes no sense.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
odograph Posted 4:15 am
06 Jul 2007
If it is chemistry, it is the more molecules I can keep out of the atmosphere the better.
There can be no arbitrary rule about myself of someone else, there can only be CO2.
Unless of course we've entered a twilight world, where "intent" is measured on the molecular scale.
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mbradc2002 Posted 7:45 am
06 Jul 2007
Actually, I thought this was exactly what they're for. It's how they're being used.
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odograph Posted 8:56 am
06 Jul 2007
The problem with your move to offsets is that you can't play by those same rules. You don't have such a uniform evil to contend with. You have to deal with the instances of good.
So far I am disappointed. It looks like you are making emotional appeals rather than rational or scientific ones.
You have to paint offsets as bad, even as you acknowledge exceptions to that rule.
You have to the paint exceptions as rare to bandage your broad claim.
Why not start over? Why not lay out the rules for effective offsets, as authentic environmental accounting, and then look at which programs meet that accouting, and which fall short?
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Jake Billings Posted 9:26 am
06 Jul 2007
Odograph is right. Your arguments have been nothing short of weak, agenda-driven and illogical. I say this as a Joe Romm supporter. I am disappointed.
First trees were bad. Then they were OK if certified but should be rare (or was it, because they are rare they are bad). The point is, if an offset is certified and accepted, which you acknowledge they can be, they are good, for all purposes. You don't seem to get this.
Next, offsets are bad, except when you've done everything you can to reduce your emissions.
Your issue with PG&E is illogical. Green power IS a carbon offset. Your electrons are not changing, nor are you reducing your energy use. You are offsetting your energy by adding more green power into the grid somewhere else, just as trees reduce emissions somewhere else.
Pepsi announced the largest purchase ever of green power - 1 billion KWhs a year - and in the same release said the purchase is reducing 900k tons of CO2. Well, are they or aren't they? If they are, green power is an offset. If they are not, then what does green power actually do, if not reduce, offset or displace emissions. Wind power for the sake of wind power, especially paying more for it, has no intrinsic value. It has value because it is clean. And what is it clean from? Emissions.
You can't be pro-green power and anti-offsets. Green power is the most popular form of carbon offsets.
You also need to stop the indulgence argument. When did you ever hear someone say, "I buy green power from my utility so I can keep my lights on all night"? Likewise, when did you ever hear someone make the similar case about offsets? In fact, by agreeing to self-imposed tax based on your emissions, you are creating a self-imposed interest in reducing those emissions. People who offset their emissions are virtually always reducing first.
Lastly, all three of your articles undermine your lifelong promotion of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Neither reduces CO2 at all, as you claim they are for, they merely stop another KWH of coal from being burned, slowing the growth of CO2 but not reducing it at all. Ironically, it is only trees that actually reduce CO2 emissions already in the atmosphere.
The short answer to your rules, Joe, is the following:
Rule #1: Certification (good ones) makes an offset good. Period.
Jake
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oregonj Posted 10:56 am
06 Jul 2007
Joe is correct - we are not going to 'offset' our way out of our global warming mess - we will need to reduce pollution from all of our sources.
An offset is essentially getting a 'credit' from a reduction in an activity that is not currently under a cap. For instance, a Californian can buy a reduction from Nebraska power production only because Nebraska doesn't have a cap - YET!. By far the better action, if you really want to reduce CO2 emissions, is to produce fewer emissions as best you can - and let the Nebraskans reduce theirs also. We are going to need all the tools if we are going to meet the scientists' projections of a necessary 75% reduction by 2050.
Buying 'green' power is not really an offset. That is an actual reduction if there is a real contract that ties your green power purchase to actual production that noone else is claiming. If the contract works as stated, that KWh bought from a wind turbine meant on less KWh bought from the high-carbon grid average.
There is only what I consider to be one source of 'certified' offsets - and those come from the CDM and JI approved under the Kyoto Protocol. These are the only truly 'certified' offsets since they fall from a mandatory compliance scheme that sets enforcable targets for CO2 reductions. Now the JI and CDM process is not perfect, but contrast that to the CCX which many participants consider much of the offset inventory sold there of very little value in actually reducing GHG gases any more than would have occurred anyways.
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SustainableGreen Posted 12:50 pm
06 Jul 2007
So Rule 1 is stentorian, stilted, superficial, harsh, misguided, and sprinkled with hubris, Rule 2 is a backtrack on Rule 1 disguised as 'exceptions', and Rule 0 (?) is an afterthought inserted at the start. And the response reveals little if any consensus, to be mild.
I propose Rule 3 (actually the fourth rule, but who's counting?): Ignore Rules 0, 1, and 2, and instead carry out a careful thoughtful accurate rewriting of the Rules. Rule 3 Part A--don't call them 'Rules'.
It appears to me there is an overabundance of engineering, yet alarmingly, a real lack of understanding of the less tangible, more basic qualities of nature. I strongly suggest some authors to correct that lack of understanding. Writers such as Thoreau, Leopold, Muir, Wilson, Abbey, and many that others can suggest, will provide a great deal of understanding, in an engaging, non-threatening manner. Of course, reading without reflection and internalization is useless, so real effort will be needed.
If done correctly, many of the appropriate principles for survival, of the entire biotic and abiotic community, will suggest themselves, and be the basis for ideas much better than mere "Rules".
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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odograph Posted 4:16 am
07 Jul 2007
That website might be amusing in another context, but the placement in this discussion is ... unfortunate.
It is about the moles (or tons) of CO2. There really is a physical, scientific, bottom line.
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Joseph Romm Posted 7:16 am
07 Jul 2007
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SustainableGreen Posted 1:41 pm
07 Jul 2007
Gee, being called out by name by someone charging an ad hominem attack is a new one--and the perverse contradiction mustn't go without notice, especially since I scarcely committed such an attack. I pretty much referred entirely to written content and not personal character. And for the record I did pose my own rule, however facetiously on the face of it. However, speaking ad hominem, what's this crap of using the third person? And "not getting it"? Someone is exhibiting both arrogance and defensiveness.
Okay, more to the topic. I mentioned Thoreau and Muir not entirely for the broad reasons of the beauty and clarity and fundamental correctness of their writing, but they have laid down gold for us to retrieve at our leisure, and for eternity. Here is an appropriate, huge-ass nugget from each of them:
Muir: "We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men...trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true; but our own little comings and goings are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much."
And Thoreau: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
Reading the works of the authors mentioned--not suggesting it is an exhaustive list--affords us vastly more and even better rules, simply expressed and universal. Learning, internalizing, and applying THESE rules will go much much much MUCH further, than even the best we could do.
More specifically, the afterthought Rule 0, weakly expressed as it is, is by FAR the most important, and properly stated, observed, and applied little else is needed. The first rule should contain the powerful essence of what we must be doing--"striking at the root". As such, all the rest is a prime example of "hacking at the branches".
Regarding offsets--first, they are the choice and preserve of the hypocritical, insincere, pretentious, lazy, and rich. They are the environmental equivalent of "rich man's war, poor man's fight". It is right in line with the rich being able to get the best health care, while billions die of the simplest of illnesses. It is mental, emotional,63 financial social Darwinism.
Second, since they are a construct of business, bureaucracy, and government, they are subject to incompetence, unfairness, inefficiency, and fraud. Compare the U.S. income tax: the richest billionaires now can pay the same 28% that teachers and taxicab drivers pay--a goddam criminal act if one ever existed. Why does ANYONE honestly think offsets will have any justice associated with them? Even a Carbon tax has the same curse attached to it. In fact, practically everything associated with the Corporate Oligarchy needs to be illuminated with the harshest possible light, and driven to extinction. That would be poetic justice indeed. "...part of the problem."
Third, they objectify, in the most typically arrogant anthropocentric way, the biotic environment. (SEE MUIR.) Trees (and any other biotic entity regarded as a commodity) are seen as just vessels for humans to use at their whim--standing waste receptacles for the result of human blind greed. And as referred to here by the thread's author, the focus is only on trees, and not forests--and if YOU "don't get it", you are indeed a waste of effort.
Both offsets and Carbon tax are the default argument of the weak and greedy. "Indulgence[s]", indeed.
I will unapologetically say that my arguments, my entire approach, has an emotional aspect. The complete lack of emotion, the cold, aseptic, self-centered greed-feeding approach we have historically used, is one reason why we are in such a goddam mess. We need to focus on the first principle--fundamental permanent universal change in our mentality and associated lifestyle--in every way possible, until all observe and apply it in our every action, and the rest will not be necessary.
I await more ill-considered 'rules'. Save us from engineers.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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caniscandida Posted 6:06 pm
07 Jul 2007
Many years ago, a sophomore engineering student, New England Irish-Catholic, tough but sweet, taught me an important lesson. He was in a core-curriculum world literature course that I was teaching. He intended to declare his major, electrical engineering, at the end of the Spring semester, but was not at all sure the department would accept him as a new major, seeing that there was much competition, and his grades were less than stellar. Would he choose a less competitive department of engineering, then, to major in, in the case of the electrical engineers' rejecting him?, I asked. No, absolutely not, he said; he loved electrical engineering, he said, and would go wherever he had to, in order to study it.
I do not know what happened to that lad -- who for all I know is by now a happy grandfather, God love him.
But I do know that he taught me a great lesson, as I said. It had never occurred to me that something like electrical engineering could be an object of love. And, I admit, that is still not altogether clear, how that can be. Nevertheless, his statement was most impressive, and as a result I have always thought more respectfully about engineers ever since.
That said, Sustainable David should quote Thoreau, Muir and the rest as much as he likes. Well done, David!
And, on the other hand, when Joseph Romm chooses to title a comment, "Romm replies," that is kind of creepy. Presumably that was one of your "jokes," Joseph? In fact I rather agree with you on the moral frailty of offsets. But really, you should retain a PR consultant.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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odograph Posted 11:18 pm
07 Jul 2007
Morality is an internal state of the human mind. Good luck improving it ... that is a noble venture in itself ... but one that I see as quite distinct from global warming in the physical world.
I guess I get it now. Some of you are willing to solve global warming if, and only if, you can do it the "right way" by changing the morality of the American people to fit your current beliefs.
I might be too cynical, or just too pragmatic, to buy into that. If I want to solve global warming ... I want to solve global warming. I can do that without worrying that everyone needs to "feel" the right way about it.
P.S. - Romm, I said "joke" myself. I said: "That website might be amusing in another context, but the placement in this discussion is ... unfortunate."
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odograph Posted 11:37 pm
07 Jul 2007
I think there is an argument to be made that people in industrial countries could be happier by slowing down, understanding their 'pursuit of happiness,' what really works, and what does not.
I don't think an endless consumptive treadmill really works ... but is that what you mean by "morality."
Is it OK that people solve global warming while feeling good? Or is it important that they solve it by feeling bad? Offsets are bad because they might let someone, somewhere, achieve a CO2 reduction while staying happy?
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spaceshaper Posted 1:34 am
08 Jul 2007
Correct me if I'm wrong but my sense of the common use of the phrase is that a feel-good solution is a solution to the problem of feeling bad but not a solution to the actual physical problem which was to be addressed. IF you are convinced that offsets demonstrate significant CO2 reduction in proportion to their cost, including the opportunity cost of not doing something more effective, please feel free to stay as happy as you please.
However there seems to be little indication that offsets, as easy and therefore popular as they are, are overall doing us much demonstrable good in the climate department and every indication that they are mostly a boondoggle, a cop-out and a distraction from reality. I for one believe that Romm's posts have been very clear in helping us separate the wheat from the chaff and guiding us in where to best place our financial, emotional, and intellectual resources.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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trailgirl Posted 6:29 am
08 Jul 2007
Stop blaming others for your not getting how offsets work. You may be an expert on many things, but you have butchered any understanding of offsets.
Purchasing green power is not reducing your emissions, at least not by your argument. The electrons entering your house are the same, probably from coal. When you 'buy' green power you are adding a KWH of green power into the grid somewhere else. You are, listen here, paying someone to reduce emissions somewhere else to compensate for the electrons you are using. Sound familiar? If green power reduces emissions, which they clearly do, so do offsets.
You have a certain vitriol against offsets and paying other people to reduce your emissions, but green power is paying to do the same thing. It's saying (I am being ironic here) I can use as much electricity as I want from my coal plant because I am paying someone to build a wind mill 200 miles away. Shall I get into the papal indulgences argument people like you make?
Now, offsets.
You use natural gas to heat your home. You reduce where you can with insulation, etc. You then pay someone to reduce natural gas at a school. It is a direct reduction, one tonne of CO2 for one tonne of CO2. It is attributable, verifiable, quantifiable. Offsets are exactly the same as green power or else green power has no environmental value.
For some reason, you and others think that electricity is different from gas and heat. CO2 and climate change is a global issue and reducing it in any location or by any method (electricity, gas, coal, etc.) has the same impact.
Not the Same?
How is it that using electricity and paying someone to 'reduce' a tonne of CO2 from natural gas from your electric utility with green power is different to the planet than using heat in your home and paying someone to 'reduce' a tonne of CO2 from natural gas from either your gas or electric utility?
Until your logic is consistent and you accept that green power offsets emissions, you simply lack the credibility to be engaged on this issue.
As for certifications, take your pick: Green-e, Environmental Resources Trust, the UNFCCC's Clean Development Mechanism, European Union ETS, Gold Standard, Voluntary Gold Standard, just to name a few. I'll be sure to tell the UN they don't have a certification. While I appreciate you offering your own rules, you might want to first look at what hundreds of experts have compiled over the last decade.
I can't wait to see your rule on replacing like emissions with like emissions. Could the planet possibly care if we reduce our air travel emissions with air travel reductions, car emissions with car reductions and electricity emissions with electricity reductions, industrial wit industrial, and so on? What next, each country must reduce their own emissions, how about each state, county or city? Seems like an efficient way to get a global 70% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Next thing you are going to tell us is that putting solar on your roof is different for climate change than paying a fraction of this amount to build a larger solar array where the conditions are ideal. A wind mill in my yard counts, but one down the road does not...
What should I do about the emissions from my Prius, Energy Star refrigerator or CFL?
The anti-offsets crowd fail to provide any solutions beyond reducing you own emissions (which, of course, I agree with). So tell us how much we can reduce our emissions with energy efficiency in our own homes. It is not even close to 100%. Then what?
Further, by being against offsets but in favor of legislation, what do you want the government to do? Reduce emissions? This is exactly what leading individuals and businesses are doing today by buying green power and carbon offsets, reducing emissions, supporting advanced technology, etc. Legislation is good, and needed, but you criticize people for preempting the government and taking direct action.
But trying to be anti-offset but pro-green power lacks a basic logic and understanding of both.
Try again, Joe, I'll be here.
Jake
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sunflower Posted 10:11 am
08 Jul 2007
The logic of reducing gas and oil consumption is to save those resources for the future. In the end, all the gas and oil will eventually be burned and that gas carbon and oil carbon will be in the atmosphere for many centuries. Gas and oil offsets will not do anything, by themselves, to reduce gas and oil carbon emissions. The market is too slippery, somebody else will collect and burn the unused gas and oil, especially as values increase past peak supplies.
Coal is another matter. Civilization will be destroyed before all the coal is mined. The hope is that we will experience the enlightenment of leaving coal in the ground.
While gas and oil carbon offsets may be illogical, coal offsets may be logical for our collective survival. We could carefully use our remaining gas and oil to build a coal-free future.
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naturescene Posted 12:07 pm
08 Jul 2007
There is no logical argument that can be made that investing in habitat protection & creation or energy alternatives & efficiency is a bad thing. The only thing is that we need to be sure we get what we pay for. We can do this.
Go ahead and call it indulgences, but realize that by doing so you are only helping to stall action and progress.
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trock Posted 12:18 pm
08 Jul 2007
However,
300 million - for a president
1 billion - for a congress.
10 billion a year in carbon offsets is almost nothing. 10 billion a year in political campaign contributions, maybe, a congress and a president.
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wiscidea Posted 2:42 pm
08 Jul 2007
"I guess I get it now. Some of you are willing to solve global warming if, and only if, you can do it the "right way" by changing the morality of the American people to fit your current beliefs."
I've selected this bit of text to launch my own brief rant about "Rule Zero: Heal Thyself". The following remarks are not intended to support or contest odograph's comments.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... changing the behavior of six billion people to conform to how a few environmentalists believe we should all live is not possible. Sorry. Just can't do it. No amount of lecturing and condemnation of certain behaviors will get everyone on board. You are not going to change the behavior of 300 million Americans, let alone the behavior of the rest of the world anytime soon.
Environmentalists must lead by example. That is "Rule Zero". Show people there is a better way to live. Show them that caring for the world improves their quality of life. If you are concerned about global warming, reduce your CO2 emissions and tell everyone how much better off you and your community are. Help others do the same. If you are concerned about biodiversity, volunteer to restore and protect a natural area near your home. If you despise chemicals and GMOs, brag about the food YOU grow organically -- our vegetable garden looks beautiful right now... just by adding compost... no chemicals.
"Rule Zero" is clean up your own life and physically do something to preserve the natural environment. Ask yourself, at least once each week, what did you do to make the world a better place? Did you simply whine about what everyone else should do? Or did you go outside and make a real difference?
I generally don't support bragging, but I wonder whether an area devoted to bragging might be useful for an environmentalism website. Tell everyone what you've done, personally, to save our planet. It might motivated others to be more responsible. It might work better than lectures and condemnation. Turn it into a competition to become America's Top Environmentalist.
[How many pounds of invasive Eurasian plants did you pull last week? Fresh air, excercise, seeing wildlife, and preserving biodiversity... what could be more enjoyable?]
Forward!
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mrb188 Posted 5:08 pm
08 Jul 2007
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odograph Posted 11:36 pm
08 Jul 2007
I'd say, no I don't think they are. Or, if they are, at least their hearts are in the right place.
I still think that's generally true ... but I think we have something to be wary of here in this "offsets" discussion.
Is it becoming anti-science? Is the "moral intent" of a ton of CO2 more important than the CO2 itself?
I hope not. And I'm somewhat with wiscidea on the path forward. I think we can find rich, happy, and sustainable lives. We can demonstrate that they are not some penance.
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odograph Posted 11:49 pm
08 Jul 2007
Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, "Physician, heal thyself," before presuming to heal other people.
Have you thought about what your penance would really look like, if you really did "everything reasonably possible?"
Do you ever drive to 'recreation' of any sort? to a hike in the mountains? To a movie? That's out.
Do you ever drive to make social engagements? That's out as well ... what's a party in the face of global warming?
Do you ever visit your aged mother? Sorry, the poor Dear will have to be satisfied with a letter in the mail.
Etc.
Or (insidiously) do you say "everything reasonably possible" when you really mean "everything up to a reasonable level of commitment?"
I don't actually expect you, or anyone else to give up the visits to Mom. And guess what? I think offsetting that trip is better than just pretending you never made it.
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Jake Billings Posted 1:21 am
09 Jul 2007
But even the letter is out as it uses paper and you certainly don't want to "pay someone else to" ship it across country for you.
According to Joe, CFLs are in, as is your iPod, computer, air-conditioning and refrigerator, because they use electricity, and green power is OK.
But cooking is out, as is heat and transportation (inc. buses, though electric trains are OK), because they use gas (like power plants but that's different, right Joe?).
Of course everything we consumer was made using both electricity and heat (coal and gas), and since heat is a no-go, CFLs, iPods, computers, air-conditioners, trains can't get made.
I can't help but laugh that coal and gas used in an electric power plant are different to the climate than coal and gas used by a factory.
But Joe hasn't really thought about that. He has a solution for electricity only, and then only household electricity.
So here's to Joe for solving <15% of our climate problem with an idea that's been around for more than a decade.
Jake
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sunflower Posted 1:34 am
09 Jul 2007
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caniscandida Posted 5:13 am
09 Jul 2007
<<
Do you ever drive to 'recreation' of any sort? to a hike in the mountains? To a movie? That's out.
Do you ever drive to make social engagements? That's out as well ... what's a party in the face of global warming?
Do you ever visit your aged mother? Sorry, the poor Dear will have to be satisfied with a letter in the mail.
>>
Well, there are aged mothers, and then again there are aged mothers ...
We have already touched on this interesting ethical question a number of times in Gristmill. When is our driving (or traveling in general, including of course flying) justifiable, and when is it not? Let us hope that things will never be so terrible that we shall need the government to tell us the answer.
It is a strong argument that as things are right now in US society, the freedom to drive even great distances for many kinds of reasons, including many of no critical urgency at all, contributes to what is commonly believed to be our "quality of life."
But it makes sense to suggest that environmentalists might begin to encourage a kind of habitual examination of conscience, very very quietly, without any boasting or self-righteousness. We Americans should start to comprehend that the "quality of life" of Western Europeans is in many ways better than ours, and yet that does not depend nearly so much on driving somewhere. We should start to pay attention to what we are doing, to think about it, to wonder why we are doing it.
Rule Zero is not, "Heal thyself." Rule Zero is, "Pay attention to what you are doing." And if you decide later that you are willing to make a significant change in your conduct or lifestyle, good. But you should not be bullied into thinking that you MUST do that right away, and really want to do it too, in order to be of any use.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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odograph Posted 5:28 am
09 Jul 2007
But I'd really be happy sending the general population a much easier message, like ... "you know, you could still do that in a Prius."
Fleet MPG is 22 or 23. The Prius (and Civic Hybrid) double that, saving money, and not coincidently halving their CO2 emissions.
Then, once we've got them out of the truck and into a Prius ... then sell them on the next step.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 6:02 am
09 Jul 2007
use CFLs
this concert's emissions were offset
most musicians with any kind of green cred interviewed back stage are running their tour buses on biodiesel
Problem is, all 3 of these things have some sort of "messaging down side," which greens are increasingly pointing out: the science and policy on offsets is tricky and some offsets are just a black hole for your money, most biodiesel comes from unsustainable feedstock, and compact fluorescent bulbs have to be treated like toxic waste (one community I read about recently was very upset when they realized that they now had to collect all the bulbs).
So it makes the greens' message very tricky, when some are advocating solutions like this and others are shooting holes in them. Debate is good, especially when it leads to better ways of doing things, but when it comes to overall policy and strategy, pointing out so many problems hurts the overall message and its movement.
I guess that means that I'm in the camp of "fake it till you make it."
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1000+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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wiscidea Posted 6:41 am
09 Jul 2007
MINDFUL LIVING
Live and help others live according to this principle.
Peace.
Forward!
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sunflower Posted 7:48 am
09 Jul 2007
I would ram it home to offset the distant use of coal, perhaps with a free low-carbon solar collector.
Target coal customers, not trees.
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